


Mixed Up

by Frea_O



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F, Rock Stars, Sound Engineering, Tour Bus, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:52:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With her new album climbing the charts, Laura Hollis is determined to make this the best tour ever...a feeling that probably won't last when she meets the new front of house engineer the label sent over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Can’t Work Like This With You Next to Me

The last thing Carmilla wants to do is go on tour with Laura Hollis, of all people.

Scratch that, actually. The last thing Carmilla wants to do is anything her mother tells her to. Which makes going on tour with Laura Hollis doubly unpleasant because it’s not like she has a choice. She’s not sure what the statute of limitations for bringing charges against the person who punched you in the face with a sword hilt is, but she should look into that if her mother’s record label is going to hold it over her head for this long.

The exec had it coming, though, which is cold comfort in the face of the fact that Carmilla has to leave her very private house and spend six weeks in the company of a bunch of losers she’s sure she’ll probably hate.

Laura Hollis the most, though.

It’s a secret she’ll carry to the grave that she’s seen Laura Hollis perform live. Not intentionally, of course, but she hadn’t exactly stopped her friend from grabbing her credit card and handing it over to buy them both tickets to a Summer Society concert. The  _Summer Society_ , for god’s sake. She should’ve put a stop to it right then and there, but she’d spotted a cute brunette at the bar with the tongue ring, and there was beer inside. Carmilla has put up with much worse musical acts for women who weren’t even half as pretty.

Of course, said brunette had vanished by the time the show opener had taken the stage, which meant Carmilla had been forced to pay attention.

Not that Laura made that difficult. Sure, the woman that strode up to the mic was cute in that wholesome way. Carmilla was willing to give her a second look. When she opened her mouth and the first note came out, Carmilla nearly dropped her beer.

Half a set later, she was positive of two things: Laura Hollis had far too much talent for somebody so tiny, and whoever was running the board was absolute shit at it.

Just because she thought that a year ago, though, doesn’t mean she wants to fix it now.

But apparently she doesn’t have a choice. So when she strolls into the production meeting at the label—half an hour late, of course, because she’s running early for her—and Laura rudely demands who she is, Carmilla drops into a chair, props her boots on the polished mahogany table, and smirks.

“I’m your new sound engineer, sweetheart.”

* * *

“I have good ideas, too.” Laura’s sure strangling her new sound engineer is not a great way to start her very first tour that’s actually being sponsored by something other than her father and a couple of pizza places back in Styria. And she’s also positive that this is a situation unique to her because the truth of the matter is sound engineers are plentiful and easily fired. You ask them if they prefer the aisle or window and you put them on a plane home.

But she’s not allowed to fire Carmilla Karnstein.

“What?” she asks LaFontaine, who’s tapping their fingers against the table because drummers are chronically incapable of sitting still. “I do. It’s not like I was born yesterday, I even took a studio engineering class—”

“Ooh, a whole class, cupcake?” says a very familiar, unwelcome voice and the subject of the hour herself slouches into the kitchen. “My bad, I didn’t realize I was speaking to an expert.”

“There’s no reason you have to be so mean about it,” Laura says, twisting in her seat and scowling. “People liked my stuff when I was touring with Summer Soc, I don’t see why you have to put me down at every opportunity.”

“Because it’s fun and I don’t have enough hobbies.” Carmilla swings close to look at Laura’s notebook, where she’s been jotting down her ideas for the set list. “Mm. Better, but why is that piece of crap still on the list?”

“ _Lophii_  is a time-honored classic. It’s my first—”

“Blah, blah, first single, whatever. It’s crap as hell to mix live with the two guitars taking the same place in the mix and it’s too risky. You’re not going to get the crowd to stay calm through that and  _307_ , not if they’re together. You get fidgety people, you lose your audience.”

“Or they go buy a beer and that’s fine, too,” LaFontaine says, switching to a different beat with their thumbs.

“Clubs can run out of beer.” Carmilla pours a glass of grape juice—which is a surprise to Laura, she’s been under the impression that the sound engineer survives on nothing but sarcasm and the tears of annoyed musicians for sustenance—and sits at the table across from Laura. The label’s paid for all of the band and the traveling crew to spend their rehearsal time together at one of their many ski cabins in Telluride. They’ve even booked a couple of venues nearby so that Laura and her crew can do a couple of live rehearsals before they kick things off at the Blues and Brews festival.

Carmilla claims that the forced camaraderie is a stupid idea. After all, they’ll have six weeks in a tour bus together. And while she has a point about that, Laura knows she’s dead wrong about everything else. They need to get this tour right.

It’s a big deal to her. There might be parts of her first label-produced album that Laura dislikes, but she’s signed with a large label, and she’s determined to do this right.

“Ever been around when a club runs out of beer?” Carmilla says. “It’s not pretty.”

“I’m not taking  _Lophii_  off the set list,” Laura says.

She feels a brief thrill of victory when Carmilla looks annoyed. “What part of ‘crap as hell to mix live’ is not getting through to you, creampuff?”

“That’s your problem, not mine. The song is important to me.”

Carmilla glares at her. Laura glares back. Honestly, sound engineers are supposed to listen to the  _band_ , not boss them around and act all snooty in dumb leather pants. It’s like Carmilla wants to get fired, except the label won’t let Laura do that. They must think she’s pretty good at her job. Because she sucks as a person.

The doorbell rings, tabling their argument for the moment. In the other room, Laura hears Perry’s “I’ll get it!” and the sound of the front door opening.

“Bass bro!”

“He’s here,” Laura says, unnecessarily.

And sure enough, twenty seconds later, Wilson Kirsch lopes into the pristine ski lodge kitchen and immediately wraps Laura in the biggest hug ever. “Singer hottie!”

LaFontaine is similarly greeted with “My little drummer bro!” Which they claim is fine, as coming from Kirsch, bro is gender-neutral and infinitely preferable to hottie, which Laura can’t seem to stop Kirsch from using.

Kirsch swivels when he sees Carmilla looking at him like she’s not sure which circus sideshow he escaped from. “Who’s the sexy new hottie?” he asks Laura in a very loud whisper.

Carmilla similarly gives Laura a blank look. “What is happening? Why is this thing here?”

Laura doesn’t bother to give her a  _play nice_  look, as it would only be a waste of time. “Kirsch, this is Carmilla, our new sound engineer. Carmilla, Kirsch is our roadie, backup singer, and he’ll be picking up guitar whenever I need to switch to keyboard.”

“Also bodyguard!” Kirsch puffs his chest up. “I protect the hotties.”

Laura can feel Carmilla’s distaste like a tangible force in the air. She shakes her head. “I told you about him,” Laura says.

“I wasn’t listening,” Carmilla says, and Laura glares.

“Carm-sexy, nice to meet you,” Kirsch says, offering his hand for a friendly high-five.

“Call me that again and my boot will go so far up your ass you’ll choke on my laces.”

Kirsch looks down at Carmilla’s boots. “Uh, bro, you don’t have laces.”

“Hey, Kirsch, there’s food,” Laura says, doing her best to prevent homicide. He makes a beeline for the spread, which has been delivered without fail by the studio every morning. Laura knows not to get used to it because soon they’ll be dealing with fast food on the road all the time. To Carmilla, she says, “Kirsch roadied for the Summer Soc when I was touring with them. He comes highly recommended, on top of that.”

Kirsch’s face clears up with happiness. “D-Bear recommended me? I knew she cared.”

“D-Bear?” Carmilla mouths, and Laura decides to ignore that.

“Why don’t I show you where you’ll be staying while we’re here?” Laura asks since it’s probably best to get Carmilla and Kirsch away from each other. Any minute now, Carmilla will realize that as the roadie, Kirsch will be working with her, and Laura doesn’t want to be here when that happens.

So she takes Kirsch up to the loft bedroom they saved for him—“Sweet view!”—and when she comes back, Carmilla and LaFontaine have made themselves scarce. Only her notebook is left, and Laura groans when she spots handwriting that’s definitely not hers in the margin.

_If you want to keep Lophii, cut 307. Nobody will miss it._

“Jerk,” Laura says. Carmilla must be the greatest sound tech in the world if any musician willingly puts up with her. She wonders exactly what Carmilla is holding over the record label that protects her from being fired because Laura would have kicked her moody butt out during the first meeting if she could have.

It’s going to be a long tour.

* * *

Carmilla’s always hated the lion’s share of everything involved in touring, but the thing she hates most is living in such close quarters. Three band members, two crew members, and whatever the hell Jeep is, all crammed into one tour bus. LMR—or as her mother would prefer it to be called, Lilita Morgan Records—has purchased the old Silas Ü tour bus exclusively for Laura’s use. They discover before they leave that LaFontaine is the only one who can actually start it and there’s a subtle-yet-persistent reek of salted herring that sticks to the air when the A/C is on. But they have enough bunks that everybody gets their own with a couple of junk bunks left over. LaFontaine snickers when it comes out that Laura and Carmilla are bunkmates and their bunks are right next to the kitchen.

“It makes sense,” LaFontaine says. “Laura’s going to get up and sneak cookies anyway, so this way she only wakes one person up instead of two.”

“And why is that person me?” Carmilla says.

“You sleep like the dead.”

“I do not.”

“You fell asleep in a patch of sunlight yesterday and you slept through Laura playing  _What’s New, Pussycat_  on the harmonica for ten minutes,” LaFontaine says. When they walk away whistling, Carmilla’s not sure she’s ever been more offended than she is in this moment.

Until LaFontaine’s words really sink in.

“Harmonica, really?” she asks as she slings her army duffel bag onto the bottom bunk. “Did you actually just sit down one day and think to yourself, why yes, I  _will_  teach myself the most useless and annoying instrument on the planet today?”

Laura hauls herself onto the top bunk and swings around so that her legs are hanging off of the bed. Carmilla tweaks the foot nearest her because she can. “I like the way it sounds. I do a lot of blues stuff, it makes sense.”

“Whatever you say, Huey Lewis. And on that note: Tom Jones? Seriously?”

“You slept through it.” Laura gives her a sunny grin, and Carmilla narrows her eyes back at her. “Also, you obviously haven’t checked Instagram if that’s what you’re offended about.”

“I don’t even follow you on Instagram,” Carmilla says, though that’s a lie. When Laura’s smile doesn’t subside, she grumbles and drags out her phone and pages through. She blinks at what she’s seeing, and turns to glare silently at her new bunkmate, who’s now in stitches. “Not funny.”

“My entire fanbase disagrees.”

Carmilla only glares harder. Apparently while she’d been sleeping on the window seat (it had been sunny and warm, and she’d been up all night trying to get her compression settings right), curled up with a book on her chest, Laura had taken her picture. Which would be fine—Carmilla knows she’s hot in any state of consciousness—except that Laura has drawn cat ears on her. And the picture has an annoying amount of likes.

“They’re calling you Catmilla,” Laura says, sounding proud.

“First person to call me that gets fed their own spleen,” Carmilla says, throwing herself onto her bunk. She doesn’t bother to unpack—they’ll be in this Joplin-forsaken bus for weeks, she has time—and instead uses her bag as a pillow. When she hears  _Hip to Be Square_  being played on the harmonica, she rolls her eyes and digs in her bag for her headphones. She falls asleep to  _You Send Me Flying_  like she usually does and apparently sleeps through the bus pulling out of the parking lot.

She doesn’t wake up until two things are being shoved in her face: a full plate and a camera.

“What the frilly hell?” she asks, more for the latter than the former. She’s worked in the music industry too long to turn down free food. She pushes the headphones off—in the time she’s been asleep, Winehouse has moved from  _Frank_  to  _Back to Black_ —and blinks at the camera. “Why is that thing in my face?”

“Welcome to the tour diaries, Carmilla!” LaFontaine says with a giant grin. “First Laura Hollis Tour Experience talent and crew lunch. With lasagna.”

Carmilla takes the plate and sits up, shoving her headphones off and looking around. The kitchen table has filled up with everybody except Jeep, who’s presumably driving the bus. “Is this going to be a thing every day? I don’t know how I feel about this other than I don’t like it.”

“Perry cooked,” Laura says brightly.

“Okay, I don’t  _hate_  it, then,” Carmilla says. But she’s still not sure she likes it. She glares at the camera. “Get that contraption out of my face before I steal your sticks and break it.”

LaFontaine turns the camera on their own face. “Carmilla loves me,” they say. “Carmilla loves all of us.”

“Carmilla knows the good places to hide the bodies,” Carmilla says, but she carries her plate to the table and swings her leg over the bench, dropping in next to Laura. “Tour diaries?”

“I have a large YouTube following,” Laura says. “We thought it’d be a good idea, lets them come on tour with us.”

Carmilla grunts. She’s not dignifying that with a proper response.

“How do you like the lasagna, Carmilla?” Perry, always the peacekeeper, asks.

Carmilla’s about to grunt again, but Laura kicks her ankle. Carmilla kicks her back, but she smiles at Perry and doesn’t even use that much sarcasm. “It’s great, thanks.”

“Good.”

Carmilla kicks Laura under the table again. Which is more or less a metaphor for how any Laura Hollis Tour Experience talent and crew lunch goes, really.

* * *

“My god, I will never get over that rush.” Laura practically skips offstage, though she can feel the weight in her limbs that tells her she’s not going to have any trouble passing out later. Nerves always threaten to eat her alive before shows, but the minute she touches the guitar strings, it all goes away and for her entire set, she’s absolutely convinced that this is precisely where she belongs. On stage, singing to a group of people she can’t really see but she can hear.

Of course, she gets the same feeling in the studio, noodling around on the piano, or jamming with Perry and LaFontaine. Maybe she should look into the fact that she’s not really all that picky, as far as being a musician goes.

Perry hands over a towel and Laura swabs at the back of her neck, grateful she chose a tank top for tonight’s show. “Bringing the gun show tonight, huh?” had been Carmilla’s comment when she’d strolled backstage to do line checks. But Laura thinks now that maybe Carmilla’s eyes had lingered on her arms, which is really weird because she’s seen Carmilla’s type—Carmilla can pick ’em up at any bar they visit—and Laura is very aware that she doesn’t fit. Not that she wants to or anything.

Thinking of Carmilla makes her want to peek out around the curtains, though she knows better. She did it once and got scolded by every member of the band and crew. It’s a time-honored tradition that bands must go off stage and be called back by applause. It gives the audience the feeling of being proactive and the band time to grab a drink or five. Laura still thinks it’s silly, and she can’t fight the feeling in the pit of her stomach that tonight the crowd might not care.

“How’s it looking out there?” she asks over their personal line.

“They’re still here, cutie.”

“Okay. That’s good. That’s nice. I can work with that.”

“Take a minute. Drink something that’s not cocoa. Vodka, preferably. Water, if you must.”

“As always, the sage advice is appreciated, Carmilla.”

Usually the sound board is tucked in the back of the room, sometimes where Laura can’t even see it. Tonight’s venue has the board close to the stage, which Carmilla had complained about for nearly twenty minutes. But it’s even weirder for Laura. She’s just really not used to being able to see Carmilla so easily. That’s the only reason her eyes kept finding Carmilla’s in the crowd. And not because sometimes Carmilla gives her such a bored look that Laura wants to laugh in the middle of a chorus or anything.

“You guys good?” she asks Perry and LaFontaine, ripping her thoughts away from Carmilla. “We totally kicked butt tonight, I can tell.”

“It did seem to go exceptionally well.” Perry dabs daintily at her forehead with a towel and adjusts her cuffs. “I even saw Carmilla smile.”

“When I flubbed the beginning of  _Won’t Say Go_ , yeah,” Laura says, though she hadn’t been looking at Carmilla. “Came in on the wrong beat.”

“You made it work.” Perry pats her on the arm. “And no, she didn’t smile at that. I don’t think? Right, LaFontaine?”

“Nah, but she was a little like the Cheshire Cat tonight. Maybe somebody slipped something into her drink,” LaFontaine says, bobbing their head and scratching at their hairline with the tip of their sticks. They check their phone and whistle. “Jeep says he’s almost out of the merch he set aside. Guess we should get back out there.”

Laura takes a deep breath to push down on the spurt of nerves eating away at her stomach lining and holds her hand out. It’s silly and Carmilla’s mocked them for it more than once, but they can’t go out and play without doing the cheer. “Treble clef on three,” Laura says.

“Nerds,” Carmilla says after they’ve shouted the cheer and have walked calmly back on stage.

It makes Laura smile as they kick off into the opening notes of _In the Light_ , which is her most famous song and the reason the audience knows there’s an encore. It had been LaFontaine’s idea to hold it until the end since it’s the song everybody’s really paid to see. 

She catches Carmilla’s eye near the end and wants to laugh because the sound tech’s never looked so bored in her life. It makes her grab the mic. Perry and LaFontaine will forgive her, she knows, and they  _did_  practice it this last week. “Here’s a song my sound gal hates,” she says, grinning innocently at Carmilla.

She doesn’t need to have the monitor turned on to understand Carmilla’s muttered response perfectly. Instead, she tosses her guitar to Kirsch and bounces over to the keyboard, which makes LaFontaine grin (they know what’s coming). When Laura nods at Kirsch, he begins playing the opening chords.

Carmilla doesn’t flip them off, though Laura can see the desire to commit murder in her eyes as LaFontaine joins Kirsch on the drums and Perry picks up the bass line. She can see a few baffled looks in the crowd, as her fans are a little young for the song. She jumps in on the keyboard and begins singing. By the end, almost the entire room is singing along, and Laura’s having so much fun that she doesn’t give a damn.

After the concert’s over and the house has cleared out, Laura stuffs a cookie from the green room in her mouth and grabs an extra for Carmilla, who’s out in the front stowing away her board. “Your commitment to melting my brain with one hit wonder drivel is charming as ever, cupcake,” Carmilla says without looking up.

“Whatever.  _Mmmbop_  is a time-honored classic for a reason. The crowd liked it.”

“The crowd is nothing but a bunch of sheep, I wouldn’t brag about winning them over.”

“Sourpuss,” Laura says, holding out the cookie as she drops onto Carmilla’s stool.

She sees Carmilla’s eyes flick from the cookie to her face in surprise before she takes it from Laura. “Thanks,” she says. “Shouldn’t you be greeting your adoring fans?”

“I’ll go back in a few minutes. Anything I can do here to help out?”

Laura freezes when Carmilla grabs the stool and yanks her back so they’re right next to each other. Super close, in fact, and Laura’s suddenly very aware that she’s sweated through an entire set list of songs, and she can smell Carmilla’s perfume—which is pervading every aspect of her life now that they’re bunkmates—and it smells even better on Carmilla than it does on the yellow pillow she keeps stealing from Laura.

And the worst part is that Carmilla smiles like she knows exactly what’s going through Laura’s head. “Sorry, cutie,” she says, leaning close. “You were in my way.”

She steps around Laura and crouches to finish looping a cable, velcroing it neatly into a case. “And to answer your question,” she says, since Laura’s still feeling a little tongue-tied, “nope, I’m good. It was enough of a pain getting Broadie not to mess up my system. No use adding a sugar-high teenager who loves Hanson into the mix. Gods, what a nightmare.”

“Hey!” But Laura wants to smile. “I’m twenty-five, thank you.”

“The rest of it’s still true.” And it’s obvious from the tone of Carmilla’s voice which part of the insult she finds the most offensive. “You don’t have to keep me company, you know. Your fans are waiting.”

“I know.” Laura climbs off of the stool and stands in front of the board, looking at all of the sliding switches. She understands the basics—she had her own board when she was twelve, a gift from her father who thought if she stayed inside and played her guitar, she wouldn’t wander past any strange men—but Carmilla’s system is much fancier. “You should teach me how to use this, O Wise One.”

“And have you take over my job? You stick to what you’re good at. I’ll stick to mine.”

“I didn’t think you cared enough about your job to feel threatened.” Laura’s already flinching before she even gets to the end of her sentence. “Wow, that came out super-mean. I totally didn’t mean it that way.”

Carmilla keeps her back pointed toward Laura. “Don’t feel like you have to be nice on my account, sweetheart.”

“Carmilla,” Laura says, her post-show high bleeding away. When Carmilla gives her a blank look, she blurts out, “You should eat the cookie. They’re pretty good. I mean, if you don’t eat it, I’m going to and Perry’s getting genuinely concerned about how many of these I’ve eaten already today.”

“I’ll fall on my sword for you later, cutie.” A very slow smile spreads across Carmilla’s face. “Okay, seriously, go talk to your fans. You’re only going to get in my way and the stammering’s adorable, but if we’re going to the bar after this, I need to get this done.”

“Someday I will get you to teach me of your sound engineering ways, don’t think I won’t,” Laura says, pointing at her as she heads back down to the aisle toward the green room where her bandmates are waiting.

She figures she imagines Carmilla’s muttered “Looking forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from Amy Winehouse's _You Send Me Flying (Cherry)_.


	2. Caught in a Hit and Run

“Q&A Day.” Laura sings it, but then, she sings everything she can, so Carmilla doesn’t bother to look over. They’re three hours from Albany and she wants to go back to sleep. She throws one of Perry’s stress balls at the ceiling and catches it. Behind the camera, LaFontaine grins. “Yes, that’s right, viewers and Hollistinians, it’s the day where I take a break from vlogging about the very exciting scenery outside of the tour bus and I answer your questions. Or the appropriate ones, at least. LaFontaine picked them this week, so this should be a good batch.”

“Can’t wait,” Carmilla says, catching the stress ball again.

She can practically hear Laura roll her eyes. “Ignore her, we had a late night and she’s grumpy this morning.”

“The grumpiest,” LaFontaine says, and Carmilla shoots them her laziest death glare.

“Okay, so first question—favorite song to open a set? Ooh, that’s a tough one, you see, because it really depends on the venue and how excited the audience is…”

Carmilla tunes her out. She likes listening to Laura’s voice—singing, talking, it doesn’t matter—and that’s probably a good thing considering she’s in charge of all of the mixing. But Laura isn’t lying: they did have a late night and far too much Drambuie, which is why she’s never letting Jeep pick the drinks again. Her head is pounding a little more than she’d like, but Laura’s insistent: it’s vlog day, and vlogging shall happen.

They should really cut back on the singer’s sugar intake. It would be better for Carmilla’s health.

“And here’s a question from Fri55yVWonderCon,” Laura says as Carmilla’s attention drifts in and out. “Are you and Carmilla sha—” She chokes.

Carmilla looks up with interest. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Laura hurriedly shuffles the printed out index card to the bottom of the pile.

Carmilla’s out of her bunk in a flash, snatching the card up. “No, no, no, I heard my name. What’s this? ‘Are you and Carmilla sharing a bunk?’ Wow, somebody’s a little forward for my taste. Nosy, nosy.”

“I thought it was a good question,” LaFontaine says, and Carmilla’s sure the camera work is going to be a little shaky this episode with the way they’re laughing.

“Give that back.” Laura makes a grab for it.

Carmilla easily holds the card out of reach. “Aren’t you going to answer the question?”

“You know for a fact we’re not sleeping together.”

“The card said sharing a bunk. Are you blushing?” Carmilla asks.

If anything, Laura goes redder. “No!”

“She is,” LaFontaine says.

“Red’s a good color on you, cutie. I think I’ll save this card. The question that made the cupcake turn into a tomato. Oh, hey, there’s more.”

“Carmilla,” Laura says from between her teeth.

Carmilla reads, “‘I only ask because the yellow pillow is sometimes on Laura’s bunk and sometimes on Carmilla’s, so do you just share?’”

“No, we don’t share!” Laura crosses her arms over her chest and glares first at Carmilla and then at the camera. “What you’re witnessing is our esteemed sound engineer being a gigantic and unrepentant  _thief_. It’s my pillow, she just steals it. We are not sleeping together or sharing a bunk.”

Carmilla can’t help herself. The challenge in Laura’s eyes just brings out the worst in her; she plops down on the seat next to Laura and absolutely drapes herself over the singer. “Methinks you’re protesting a bit much, cutie.”

Laura elbows her in the sternum. The scolding email she’s going to get from the label is absolutely worth it.

As is the high five LaFontaine gives her when Laura isn’t looking.

* * *

LaFontaine uploads the video the minute they get to somewhere with semi-reliable internet, before Laura can even go in and remove  _that_  question. She spends dinner sulking about it and rolls her eyes extra-hard at Carmilla during sound check to let her know how happy she’s not. Carmilla is a thief, okay. She’s stealing Laura’s prized yellow pillow and now everybody thinks they’re sleeping together, which they are not.

Like she even wants to sleep with Carmilla.

She’s not even attracted to her. Her face is too stupid and angular and her hair’s always curly and she has the audacity to look bored during the best songs in the band’s set. And she wears those leather pants like she’s actually a member of some band that’s much cooler than Laura and her friends. She’s definitely not Laura’s type.

“Earth to cupcake,” Carmilla says in her ear, and Laura jolts. She looks across the pit at the front and the rows of seats to the board, where Carmilla has her chin propped up on a fist. “If you’re not too busy trying to summon cookies with your mind, feel like taking it from the top? I need to check this mix again.”

“What? Oh. Sure, sure I can do that.” How long was she spaced out for, Laura wonders? She picks up the guitar from the ground next to her, waits for LaFontaine to count them in, and starts playing their one and only cover. It’s always a little weird playing to an empty room, when the only focal point is really Carmilla, so she turns slightly to cross her eyes at Perry, who shakes her head and smiles back. She’s definitely the band mom.

When she turns back, Carmilla’s moved away from the board and is slinking toward the stage. She waves at the trio to keep playing, hops up on stage, and strolls up to Laura, who absolutely does not go still when Carmilla crowds her space to check her mic.

She has the nerve to wink as she hops back offstage and heads for the board again. Laura watches her adjust something and suddenly she can hear her own guitar through the monitor sound. Oh, her b-string’s sharp.

When Carmilla gives them the a-okay sign, Laura stops playing, hits her tuning pedal, and fixes her b-string. “We sound good, right?” she asks into the microphone.

“I’ve heard better.”

“Car _mill_ a,” Perry says, and Laura has to bite down hard on her bottom lip because Carmilla’s smirk should not be hilarious to her.

“I think I’ve got the feel for this place now,” Carmilla says, “but just to make sure, I want to check my drum mix. Dropkick Ginger?”

LaFontaine grins and proceeds to rip their way through their favorite drum solo, and Laura can already tell their showcase is going to be five minutes longer than usual in the show tonight. Perry might tut a little, but who can deny the kind of happiness that’s taken over LaFontaine’s face right now? Laura listens for a minute, then catches the raised eyebrow in challenge that they send her way. A quick grin back and she’s jumping in, thumbing out a melody by ear.

She hears Carmilla’s exasperated, “Oh  _fuck_  you” through her earpiece and only grins harder. Perry tuts at them both, but even she can’t resist, bringing in a baseline that counters Laura’s melody perfectly.

“I hate you all,” Carmilla says, but Laura can hear the mix through the monitor and knows Carmilla’s adjusted the sound perfectly for them. “It’s like you don’t even want the show to ever start on time.”

Like she’s ever cared about that before. Grinning, Laura steps up to the microphone and sings, making up the words as she goes because the first rule of jam sessions is that the songs aren’t supposed to make sense. “This is a song about the woman who stole my pillow, and now she won’t give it back, the thief,” she sings, and she looks up to see Carmilla’s raised middle finger, but their sound tech is laughing harder than Laura’s ever seen her.

Sound check runs over, but the best part is that Carmilla was recording the whole time. Laura spends the trip to Las Cruces bent over her guitar and a notepad, the jam session playing through her headphones as she figures out the new lyrics.  _The Woman Who Stole My Pillow_  is probably not going to win her any friends at her new label, but it makes her smile—until Carmilla, sleeping on the bunk below her, lunges up and tries to smother her with said pillow.

At least she gets the pillow back.

* * *

They play their first sold-out show in Providence. The venue’s a little small, but Carmilla doesn’t point that out because Laura’s enthusiasm isn’t the worst thing in the world. And she only gets distracted once during sound check. 

They grab Mexican because it’s Kirsch’s turn to choose. Carmilla picks at her Machete tacos, which she only ordered because of the name. She’s not sulking, precisely, but an email from her mother makes her want to stomp around. The rest of the band is in a good mood—LaFontaine is chewing their food enthusiastically while telling Perry all about some new discovery where they think artificial structures are blocking a star somewhere, Jeep is catching up on the band’s Instagram and social media, and Laura and Kirsch are discussing  _Beowulf_  because apparently the Summer Society bus was also kind of a book club—and Carmilla strangely doesn’t want to ruin that.

She should have known her mother had ulterior motives for sending her on this tour.

Halfway through her Dos Equis, one of her tacos disappears, replaced by half of Laura’s quesadilla. Carmilla looks up in surprise, but Laura’s already back in deep discussion about Grendel. She does smile when Carmilla nudges her beer over, offering, though she shakes her head.

Usually by week three on the road, everybody’s ready to kill each other. And sure, they’ve had some epic meltdowns—everybody’s very cautiously cleaning the kitchen now after Perry lost it at them the other night—but for the most part, it’s exactly like it is now. It’s like they’re friends.

Carmilla picks up her quesadilla with a queasy feeling in her stomach. If she follows her mother’s orders, she’ll be betraying friends. Great. She’s not sure which part of that she hates more. No, scratch that, she’s entirely sure. When the hell did she end up with these weirdoes?

Laura swipes her beer and takes a sip. Carmilla can’t stop the laugh when she wrinkles her nose. “Stick to your fruity wines, cupcake,” she says.

“Got you to laugh.” Laura pushes the beer back. Kirsch, it appears, is now bothering Jeep to include a picture of him with walrus tusks made out of straws on the band’s Instagram page, so Laura leans toward Carmilla, keeping her voice down. “C’mon, grumpy guts, we’ve got a  _sold out_  show tonight. A little happiness won’t actually give you a rash.”

A sold out show her mother wants her to sabotage. Apparently the pre-label songs are getting too much buzz—probably because they’ve never been mixed live by somebody competent before—and Lilita Morgan is unhappy with this. And though she doesn’t outright say it, as her mother is too smart to put anything incriminating in text, but she’s withholding Carmilla’s pay unless she does something about it. Which is a surprise to Carmilla. She wasn’t under the impression she was getting paid at all.

She really needs to look into that statute of limitations thing.

“What’s up with you?” Laura pokes her arm. “Is something wrong?”

Carmilla jolts a little. “Sorry, cutie. Off in another world. I’m going to go get another beer.”

“I’ll come with you. I don’t want to be here when Kirsch shoves one of those things up his nose.”

Which means Laura’s made it her personal mission to cheer Carmilla up, she knows, but Carmilla shrugs and heads for the bar. Two beers is a good limit before a show; any more and she might unintentionally follow her mother’s orders about sabotaging Laura’s show.

Since the bartender is occupied, Carmilla leans with her back against the bar, propping her elbows up. Laura mimics her pose and starts chattering, even though Carmilla’s watching the soccer match on the TV in the corner. “They’re totally pushing me to try and be the new Carly Rae,” Laura says, wrinkling her nose. “They want a love song from me next, and I really don’t know if that’s in the cards for me, you know? I can’t just—it’s not like they can just say jump and I can be all ‘why, yes! Why didn’t I think of that and where would you like me to land?’”

“Actually, that’s exactly how your relationship with a label works,” Carmilla says as one of the soccer players misses a penalty kick. “And you’d better stick the landing, cutie.”

Laura nudges her with a shoulder. “I don’t want to be Carly Rae Jepsen, though. No disrespect to the great CRJ—”

“You fell asleep listening to  _Tonight I’m Getting Over You_  on a loop the other night, so actually I have plenty of disrespect for that overproduced mess of a pop star—”

“But it’s just not me, you know? And if I’m just going to let the label turn me into something I’m not, what’s the point?”

“Staying true to yourself means going back to a life on the road playing shitty bars with an even shittier mixer,” Carmilla says, helping herself to some tortilla chips from a basket nearby. “And you only like Carly Rae because you think she’s cute.”

Laura’s chin goes up the way it does when she’s uncomfortable but determined to prove a point. “She’s not unattractive,” she says, and Carmilla laughs. “I’m just saying—wait, how did you know that my last sound tech was terrible?”

Carmilla chokes on a chip. Luckily, she’s saved from having to answer by a trio of girls who look like they belong in middle school. Christ, the kids are getting younger every year. They all have hearts in their eyes when they look at Laura.

“Um, excuse me? I’m so sorry to bother you, but are you…”

To give Laura all the credit, she’s great with fans. Carmilla’s worked with musicians who are rude to everybody, fan and coworker alike, and this will never describe Laura. She’s gracious to the point of being annoying about it, which is why Carmilla treats it as a mission to stand nearby and snort at inappropriate moments. Usually it gets her an elbow in the ribs for her trouble.

Today, though, one of the moppets looks at Carmilla with exactly the same star-struck expression people reserve for Laura. Carmilla’s more used to inquisitive frowns. “You’re Carmilla, right?” the kid asks.

“What’s it to you?” she asks, narrowing her eyes, and Laura elbows her.

The moppet only seems to smile wider at the rudeness. “Ohmygosh, it _is_  you! I’ve watched all of the videos and I can’t believe it, you’re exactly the same in real life, this is so cool. Can you sign my T-shirt, too? That would be, like, the greatest, ohmygosh.”

It takes Carmilla’s brain a few seconds to catch up to the rest of her and the only reason she doesn’t glare and shoo the child away is because she knows Laura won’t shut up if she does that. “Damn videos,” she says under her breath. “I’m going to kill LaFontaine.”

She can feel Laura’s suppressed laughter as she hands over one of her spare sharpies.

“Hold still, kid,” Carmilla says, spinning the moppet around so she can sign somewhere safe, like her shoulder. She’s the crew, she’s not supposed to deal with this crap. “What’s your name?”

“Cat,” the girl says, and Laura’s laughing even harder now, though she does a fairly good job keeping up her conversation with the other two infants.

Scowling, Carmilla writes out  _Cat—Laura Hollis sucks without me around to make her sound good. — Carmilla_  on the back of the girl’s shoulder. It’s stupid, but she draws a cat’s paw, too. Whatever. “There you go, kitten. Now get out of here, I want to drink my beer in peace.”

“Carmilla,” Laura says, but the girl giggles like Carmilla’s just bestowed the greatest blessing ever on her, and the trio retreats.

“Shut up,” Carmilla says before she can say anything. “I don’t want to talk about this ever.”

Laura bounces in place. “You’re internet famous!”

“Shut your cavity-riddled mouth!”

“I brush thoroughly, thank you.” Laura pays for their drinks before Carmilla can, and then she’s racing back to the table, pinging around like a pinball. “You guys are never going to guess who has fa-a-a-a-ns.”

“This is the worst day of my life,” Carmilla says, plunking down in her seat and reaching for the quesadilla. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“We’ve all wondered,” LaFontaine says, and Perry glares at them. “What? We have! The studio’s gotta have some hold over you if you’re here and haven’t stomped off in a huff. Current theory is you shot a man in Reno just to watch him cry.”

Carmilla stops with the quesadilla halfway to her mouth. “Ugh.”

“That was some pretty terrible wordplay, li’l drummer bro,” Kirsch says, nodding and stealing Carmilla’s taco.

She considers stabbing him, decides it’s too much effort (though she does enjoy Perry’s scandalized “Wilson!”), and instead bites into the quesadilla. LaFontaine isn’t that far off. And really… She thinks about her mother’s email, about the adoration on the moppet’s face, and how much the tour hasn’t sucked, and she sighs. She might as well come out with it. “What’s the statute of limitations on battery in the state of Connecticut?”

“Carmilla.” Laura’s eyes are  _really_  wide. “Who did you kill?”

“Relax. I hit him the face,” Carmilla swallows a bite of quesadilla. It tastes like shame. “With a sword. The hilt part, though,” she adds because everybody is gasping at her. “He was pissing me off, but he kind of works for my mother and now she’s holding all of it over my head if I don’t go on this tour and do what she wants.”

“Your…mother?” Laura asks.

“It’s difficult to fire your sound engineer when she’s the adopted daughter of the label head, sweetheart,” Carmilla says, and for a second, it’s kind of nice. She gets to finish her quesadilla and half of her beer in the shocked silence around the table. Even Jeep is gawking and he’s definitely not a gawker. She swallows the last bite. “Surprise, I guess.”

They take that news really well, considering. Carmilla has to deal with being called “Label Spy” for a couple of days by a very untrusting LaFontaine but after Carmilla shows the nerd the very polite fuck you she sent back to her mother’s request to sabotage all of Laura’s non-label-approved songs, they’re all mostly on good terms. As revenge for not telling them, though, Laura starts dragging Carmilla out to the fan meet and greets.

Carmilla supposes she should’ve just kept her damn mouth shut.

* * *

Since LaFontaine is driving the bus to give Jeep a rest, Laura sets the camera up on a tripod and checks all of the settings to make sure she’s got it right.

Carmilla leans back against the yellow pillow and looks at the top of her bunk through her sunglasses. She’s got the disaffected musician act down to a tee. “Why are we doing this?”

“Because after this festival, we’re off for three weeks. I don’t want there to be a break in tour diary stuff, but I’m tired of talking at the camera with nobody to talk back so…” Laura makes Vanna White hand motions because she knows it’ll annoy Carmilla. “A feature on you! It’s exciting. Your fans will love it.”

Carmilla groans.

“C’mon, it’s really cute that you have fans.” It’s adorable, and Laura has totally noticed that she signs everything with a little cat paw print. Her engineer is nothing if not the world’s biggest softie.

“It’s cute when they’re not bothering me at the board while I’m trying to make you sound good.”

“Which we can totally cover during the video. Meet and greets are for after the show only. Though, um, Carm?”

“What?”

“Can you put on a different shirt?”

“What, you don’t want the fans to see me in my vintage Suck My Clit World Tour shirt?”

Laura’s focused on the camera when she hears Carmilla grumbling, so she looks up to smile in victory—and nearly chokes on her own tongue because Carmilla simply yanks the offensive shirt over her head. Of course her bra is black. No other color would throw such stark contrast on the very, very smooth skin of her abs and back.

“If you’re going to keep staring like that, I might have to charge for the show,” Carmilla says.

“I wasn’t—I mean, I was just—just surprised, that’s all.” But Laura can’t stop herself from sneaking a couple more glances at the bumps in Carmilla’s spine as she bends over and digs through her duffel for a better shirt. And the really tight pants that leave little to the imagination, which is really a problem right now because Laura’s mind is simultaneously blank and overheating. She resolutely fixes her gaze on the camera, feeling a bit like a gazelle. If she moves, the predator will pounce. “Where did you even get that shirt, anyway?”

“An ex, where else?” Carmilla yanks a pink shirt over her head and grins over her shoulder at Laura. “Better?”

“No,” Laura says, and shakes her head quickly. “I mean yes. Much better. Thank you for the bare minimum of nudity—I mean decency! Gah.”

“Sit down before you hurt yourself, cupcake.”

Laura supposes she has a point and, feeling like a pressure cooker, she hits record on the camera. Carmilla lounges back against the stolen pillow and reaches out, hooking her fingers through Laura’s belt loop, so of course the first thing viewers will see in this video is Laura tumbling gracelessly onto the bunk bed. “Okay there?” Carmilla asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Just peachy,” Laura says. “That wasn’t humiliating or anything, but hey, we’re here. Hi, Hollistinians and Carmillites.”

Carmilla’s scoff tells Laura exactly how she feels about this name for her fanbase. Or that she has a fanbase at all.

“I finally got Carmilla to agree to doing a video with me instead of hanging out in the background and providing color commentary. We’re going to talk about what she does with the band—”

“As little as possible,” Carmilla says.

“—and LaFontaine printed out some questions that I’m sure aren’t embarrassing at all.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Let’s get started, shall we? So, Carmilla, what exactly do you do on the Laura Hollis Tour Experience? Besides be the best sound engineer ever?”

Carmilla tips the sunglasses down to give Laura the most disdainful of her annoyed looks. It takes a little more prodding—some of it literal—before she finally starts listing her duties in a very bored voice. Laura’s not sure “Scaring Broadie into submission so the neanderthal doesn’t screw up my mic placement for the forty-seventh time” is really necessary, but she’s not going to stop Carmilla when she’s on a roll. Especially not when she starts talking about things she actually likes, which is her equipment. It’s such a rare side of Carmilla to see, watching her wax poetic about arranging a mix, when usually she’s sullen and lounging.

“And it looks like Laura’s willing to listen to me talk about cab placement forever, but I know the rest of you are bored,” Carmilla says to the camera, and Laura blinks, realizing that at some point her attention must have drifted. Carmilla looks amused. “Back with us?”

“I was totally listening,” Laura says, wrinkling her nose.

“You were daydreaming about snickerdoodles.”

“That’s not fair, Perry’s snickerdoodles are supernaturally good.” But Laura can’t deny it, she’s a little more flustered than she wants to be. Which is basically her life as Carmilla’s roommate on this trip. Annoyed, she grabs the only thing guaranteed to calm herself down. Carmilla’s eyebrow goes up when Laura settles the guitar on her thigh. “For our Q&A portion,” Laura says. “If you refuse to answer the question, I’ll play  _Mmmbop_.”

“Thrilling,” Carmilla says. “Hand over the questions.”

“Ha, like I trust you with any of these.” Laura shuffles them and picks one at random. “Favorite band and/or singer?”

“Justin Bieber.”

“It is not,” Laura says.

“I can’t help it.” Carmilla’s voice is dryer than the Sahara. “His eyes just do things to me, cupcake.”

As revenge, Laura begins playing  _Baby_  on the guitar.

Carmilla grimaces. “What is that ungodly noise?”

“Proof that you’re a liar.” Laura switches to  _You Know I’m No Good_  instead because even she’s not going to play Bieber for more than twenty seconds. “I know for a fact you’re a giant Amy Winehouse fan, you play it practically every night before you go to sleep.”

“Watching me, cutie? Good choice. I would’ve thought you’d bust out  _Rehab_.”

“This one feels more like you.” It’s a little embarrassing to admit she even knows the song, and she’ll never confess it was because she saw it on Carmilla’s iPod one day. She sometimes plays it when Carmilla’s doing line checks and can’t hear her. “Care to sing a couple verses?”

“Nope. Jam sessions are your thing, not mine. I just make you sound good.” Carmilla pulls off her sunglasses and tosses them up onto Laura’s bunk.

“I don’t even know if you can sing,” Laura says, narrowing her eyes.

“I like having this mysterious air. Drives you absolutely crazy, doesn’t it?”

“A little. You’re our engineer, you understand music better than anybody I know—”

“Aw, I’m touched.”

“But I’ve never actually seen you play an instrument beyond tuning.”

“Not telling,” Carmilla says, and Laura starts playing  _Mmmbop_. Her eyes narrow at the Hanson song. “That’s a low blow. Fine. I can play instruments. In the plural sense.”

“Care to share which ones?”

“Only if you agree never to play that infernal song ever again.”

Laura immediately stops. Carmilla sits up and sighs and holds a hand out. It takes Laura a full ten seconds to realize that she’s gesturing for the guitar. Laura wastes no time passing her baby over.

Which is a giant mistake, she sees right away. Because Carmilla lounging around diffidently in leather pants and smirking is one level of hot, but adding a guitar to the mix? Laura’s brain might actively short circuit. Carmilla frowns and tunes the e-string—which was fine, she’s such a brat—and plays a couple chords. She gives the world’s most long-suffering sigh before her fingers start moving, flying over the strings in a way that’s absolutely mesmerizing. Laura’s pretty good at the guitar, though piano’s her main instrument, but she has nothing on the show of talent unfolding in front of her.

Laura turns to the camera and mouths ‘Holy crap!’ because are they seeing this? Well, they aren’t yet, but they will soon, and she’s pretty sure the viewers are going to agree with her.

It takes her a minute to recognize the song, but only because Pink Floyd’s more her dad’s jam than hers. But of course  _Comfortably Numb_  would be Carmilla’s go-to song. Laura props her chin on her fists, enjoying the concentration on Carmilla’s face, the way her eyebrows knit together and smooth out as she tries to remember the notes. Laura’s pretty sure she looks like a love-struck teenager, but she thinks the internet will forgive her.

“Not sure how much more proof you need,” Carmilla says, letting the notes trail off. She gives the camera a sardonic look. “Yes, internet, I can play the guitar. Try not to lose your minds.”

“You said instruments, as in plural,” Laura says. “What else can you play?”

“The triangle and the shoe tambourine,” Carmilla says.

Laura pouts.

It appears Carmilla can’t help herself any more than Laura can when she’s holding a guitar. She starts to play  _Here Comes the Sun_ , looking a little bored as she does so. “Fine. If you must know, I play guitar, I know my way around the piano thanks to years and years of lessons that I would do anything to forget, and the viola, but it’s been years so I’m really rusty.”

“The viola, really?”

“And the cowbell. Actually, that’s my best instrument.”

Laura can’t stop the giggle. “Of course it is.”

When the idea strikes, she digs around underneath Carmilla’s bunk. It had taken her forever to convince Carmilla to have half of the storage space, which was kind of annoying because Carmilla really doesn’t have all that much. Laura pokes through her things until she comes up with her ukulele, which is bright yellow.

Carmilla only tilts her head. “You’re really insistent on this jam session, cutie. You’re not going to give up, are you?”

Laura begins tuning. She’s not the greatest at the ukulele, but she likes it, even though the last time she dragged it out Carmilla made a snarky comment about finally finding a proper-sized instrument for her. “Nope,” she says. “Jam sessions are a necessary part of the touring life and by keeping knowledge of your prowess from me, you have deprived me of this experience. Prepare to make amends.”

“If I’m doing this, I’m picking the song.”

It takes Laura a couple of measures to pick up what Carmilla starts playing. “Paula Abdul?” she asks, and Carmilla laughs, a long, wicked sound that makes goosebumps rise on Laura’s arms. “Are you kidding?”

“You started it.”

“ _Straight Up_ ,” Laura says, shaking her head. “Something neither of us is. Congratulations, you are officially the worst.”

“Are you going to sing or not?” Carmilla asks. “You keep missing your cue.”

“Worst,” Laura repeats, and racks her brains until she remembers the words. She begins strumming away at the ukulele, trying to find the counterpoint to Carmilla’s chords. “Lost in a dream,” she sings, and settles into the song with her heart feeling light. “Don’t know which way to go...”

It takes every bit of willpower she has not to upload the video out of order because she figures the world  _needs_  to see Carmilla with a guitar, even though a very selfish part of her wants to keep that image to herself. But the world will just have to wait their turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet they're going to break YouTube (also the chapter title is from _Straight Up_ ).


	3. Your Eyes Looking Like Coming Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't actually mention any songs in this chapter, but two singers get mentioned, so the title comes from _Everything Has Changed_.

The night after Carmilla and Laura’s jam session, the band plays one more show on their own and then it’s off to Tennessee. She hates most of the American south, but Tennessee is the worst offender by far. Tennessee is home to Nashville.

Carmilla fucking hates Nashville.

Her job changes at the festival because these events have their own techs and they get very possessive. Instead of being out front, she sets up all of their equipment so she’s monitor engineering, which gives Kirsch a break and lets him remain on stage for the whole set. She’s not fond of this set-up—ideally, she wants to be in the crowd, controlling the EQ and making sure the gain’s not too high—but she can’t deny it’s nice to be closer to the band and to tease Laura about her nerves right before she goes on stage. Usually she has to do this over their earpieces.

Now if only Danny Lawrence weren’t hulking around, getting in the way.

The Summer Society’s headlining the festival, which is the reason Carmilla suspects Laura pushed for the label to let them do it in the first place. Instead of practicing with her own band or literally any other activity on the planet, the Summer Society lead singer is hanging out with Laura and her friends. Laura’s always so incredibly happy to see her, too. She talks in a rush and she’s always touching Danny’s arm or hugging her, and her conversation over the past two days has become “Danny said this” and “Danny and I were talking about that” and Carmilla’s pretty sure she wouldn’t mind it if Danny wound up in a shallow grave somewhere far away.

But seriously, Ed-Sheeran-in-a-taffy-pull needs to go away. Carmilla can see them now, standing off to the side and smiling at each other as she runs her line checks. Laura is talking about something or other with great enthusiasm, waving her hands and swinging her hair around like she always does when she flirts with girls at the bar. She has her neck craned at a ridiculous angle to look at the ginger Gigantor.

“Hey, Carmilla, smile!” LaFontaine pushes the camera in Carmilla’s face. “You get to be backstage with us for once and join in the cheer.”

“And to think I never knew my life was incomplete,” Carmilla says, not looking at where Danny and Laura are walking over with dumb smiles on their faces. Are their hands brushing?

Laura bounces over to the monitor board, stepping close so she can look over Carmilla’s shoulders as she makes an adjustment. “Ooh, what’s that switch do?”

“Prevents you from sounding like a gerbil in your earpiece, creampuff.” Laura’s ongoing curiosity about the board will forever be amusing to Carmilla.

Danny, on the other hand, is frowning at Laura’s hand, which is resting on Carmilla’s shoulder.

Carmilla smirks and shifts so she’s just a tiny fraction closer to Laura. “If you want to sound like a gerbil, I can make that happen.”

Laura’s face bunches up. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Shame. Maybe next time.”

At the stage manager’s two minute warning, Laura gathers Perry, LaFontaine, and Kirsch close so they’re all huddled with their arms around each other’s shoulders (Kirsch obligingly crouches), and Carmilla’s a little grateful she’s usually out in the house at this point because she doesn’t think she’d ever stop mocking them. Until Laura beckons impatiently at her and at Danny, who looks just as thrilled to be there as Carmilla feels. In the end, Kirsch has his arm hooked around her from one side, and Danny is on her other side, so Carmilla feels like the rose between two incredibly overgrown thorns.

“If this is some kind of weird prayer circle type thing, I feel the need to remind everybody of my friendly atheist status,” Carmilla says.

Laura, who’s across the circle, only smiles. “You’re safe. Band hug.”

“I don’t see how that’s safe. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s worse.”

“Aw, bro.” Kirsch ruffles her hair.

Perry very wisely breaks the circle and grabs Carmilla by the shoulders before she can perform the only acceptable retaliation, which is to murder Kirsch where he stands. “That’s enough bonding for now, I think,” she says, patting Carmilla on the shoulder. “Let’s do the cheer and go on out.”

“Good point.” Laura holds her hand out, and Carmilla makes sure to beat Danny so her hand’s the one on top of Laura’s. The rest of the group piles on. “Let’s kick butt—”

“No,” Carmilla says.

“—on three! One, two, three!”

“Let’s kick butt!”

Carmilla rolls her eyes and goes back to the monitor board, slipping her headphones over her left ear and checking her displays. Perry and LaFontaine head closer to the stage, but Laura and Danny lag behind, the former practically vibrating with pre-show nerves. They’ll dissipate the minute she starts playing.

“So your engineer’s a little intense,” Danny says, apparently not realizing Carmilla can hear them. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Carm? She’s surly because she hates Tennessee. She likes you fine. In a very Carmilla way.”

“If you say so.”

Laura gathers her hair to hold it off of her neck and Carmilla peeks up from adjusting a few sliders. She’s wearing that green tank top again, and Carmilla’s only human. “Though if she doesn’t like you, that’s better for me. You’ll be less likely to steal her to replace SJ. I can’t believe you haven’t fired her yet.”

“She’s improving. Maybe your engineer could give her some tips and we could have a halfway decent show.”

Not likely, Carmilla thinks. She snorts, which makes Kirsch look over at her in confusion, but before he can draw any attention to it, the stage manager gives them the go ahead and the band heads out to the sound of thunderous applause.

* * *

“You should think about it, is all I’m saying.” Danny kicks back in the camping chair and sips her beer; the rest of the Summer Soc band members have gone to sleep, but she’s still a night owl. Laura isn’t, precisely, but it’s been months since she’s had the chance to hang out with Danny, what with getting signed by Danny’s label, putting out the album, and all the publicity that went into it. And now the tour, which is both taking forever and going by in a blur at the same time.

“I was going to go spend a couple days on the beach,” Laura says. “I could use the vacation.”

“Or you could use the time to get back to your roots.” Danny’s grin is infectious as she pats the side of her tour bus affectionately. “We’re swinging by Styria in a week, we can totally drop you at your dad’s place. Didn’t you say you have three weeks off? A week with us, a week with him, a week on the beach. Sounds like the perfect vacation. Elsie and Mel miss you.”

Laura snorts and finishes off her beer—her last beer, as she’s going to have a hard enough time walking in a straight line back to her bus as it is. Everything’s swimming a little too pleasantly right now. “Honestly, Dan, I was kind of looking forward to sleeping in a bed that’s not moving at sixty miles per hour every night. And Carmilla would never go for it. She deserves a break more than I do, it wasn’t like she took this job by choice.”

“We’re totally willing to pay her crazy big bucks. SJ really needs the help.”

“I’ll ask her, but she’ll probably say no.”

Danny shakes her head. “Just bat your eyelashes and say please. No way in hell that woman turns you down if you ask nicely.”

Laura can’t help but laugh. “We’re talking about the same Carmilla, right? Short, dark, and broody?”

“I think you mean short, dark, and thirsty.” Danny points the beer bottle at her. “Thirsty for all that.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She’s still laughing, but even drunk, Laura knows the laughter is too loud, too close to hysterical. “Carmilla is not thirsty for this—for me. No way in hell.”

“If you say so, Hollis.”

Laura squints because Danny’s starting to look blurry, which is a sign she needs to go to bed soon. She groans, though. Danny does not need to put these ideas in her head, that Carmilla is thirsting after her because Laura’s already fighting the biggest crush ever. “You are the worst ex-girlfriend or ex-almost-girlfriend or whatever it is. A proper ex would not be encouraging me to use my wiles on somebody as hot as Carmilla to get her to fix their sound. There is so much moral bankruptcy going on in that idea.”

“I got my hands on a bootleg of your show in Phoenix. It sounded _good_ , Laura.”

“I always sound good,” Laura says, sniffing.

“There’s good and there’s _good_. And you got yourself a goldmine of a mixer, even if she’s socially constipated—”

“Hey,” Laura says.

“And SJ’s our sister, you know? We can’t fire her, but our shows are suffering. So, please, just ask?”

“Fine. I will ask, but I am putting it on the record that the thing about being morally bankrupt stands. And you can’t lure Carmilla away from me. She may be a cranky engineer, but she’s _my_ cranky engineer and I’m keeping her.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Danny says, grinning as Laura makes her way out of the camping chair. The redhead frowns. “Wait, maybe I should walk you back.”

“I’ve got it,” Laura says because honestly, Danny’s overprotectiveness is one of the reasons they never really moved beyond almost. “I will talk to her and I will see you in the morning, provided I am not too hungover to perform.”

“Just like the old days,” Danny says.

Five minutes later, Laura’s regretting not taking Danny up on her offer. For one thing, the night is chilly and there’s a wind and Danny’s so tall she blocks that nicely. For another, she actually can’t walk a straight line very well, so she has to pick each step carefully. She runs into a couple of fans and hopes that she held it together and they didn’t see how wasted she was because that really messes with the wholesome image the label wants. Either way, by the time she stumbles on the bus, groaning when she stubs her toe, the world is swimming and not in a good way.

Carmilla doesn’t even stir when she strips down and yanks on the first pajamas she can find, her anglerfish boxer shorts and a T-shirt that smells like Carmilla. Laura pauses over this, wondering why it’s weird, and eventually shrugs.

When she tries to climb onto her bunk, she nearly lands flat on her ass. Instead, she stumbles and takes a nosedive into the bottom bunk.

“What the sh—” Carmilla thrashes and sits up so fast that Laura hears the solid _thunk_ of something hitting the underside of the top bunk followed by vociferous swearing. Laura freezes. Maybe if she stays really still, Carmilla won’t see her and won’t blame her.

But of course Carmilla finds her in the dark. “Laura?” 

“Go back to sleep.” Laura tries to push on Carmilla’s shoulder, to make her lie down again, but Carmilla’s rubbing her head and scowling. “Just trying to get in bed and I—I slipped. Shhh, sleep.”

Carmilla grabs the hand trying to push her, lacing their fingers together before Laura can tug her hand back. “You’re drunk,” she says.

“Tipsy. I’m fine.”

“You’re three sheets to the wind, cutie.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Laura says, but when she tries to get up, the walls and the ceiling switch places and that’s definitely not the sign of sobriety she’s hoping for. “Okay, maybe a little drunk. Can you help me into my bunk? Then you can go back to sleep and I won’t bother you again, I swear.”

Carmilla remains silent for a long moment before she grumbles. “With my luck, you’ll fall out of the damn bunk. Here.” She scoots over, closer to the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“Avoiding more calamities. Lie down.”

Well, when she puts it that way. Laura doesn’t want to try and climb that ladder again and Carmilla’s bed is warm. She climbs off of Carmilla’s legs and settles in next to her. The bunk’s really not that wide; she experiences one horrifying and intoxicated moment of vertigo, like she’s going to roll right off, before she hears an annoyed curse. Laura yelps as Carmilla climbs out of the bed and pushes her shoulder and her hip until Laura’s against the wall. She climbs back into the bunk, blocking Laura from falling off the bunk with her body.

Laura scrunches her eyes closed. “Thank you, I almost just died right there.”

“I’ll protect you from the evil gravity monster, buttercup.”

“My hero.” Laura lets the cozy shimmer of alcohol carry her toward sleep before an important thought pokes through. “Danny wants me to come on her tour. During the break.”

“Won’t that be a kick.”

“You, too. I’m supposed to ask. Supposed to…” Laura’s having a hard time thinking of words. “Ask nicely.”

“Laura, go to sleep.”

“Okay, but only because you used my name,” Laura says, her eyes closing. She cuddles in against Carmilla’s warmth and enjoys the fact that she gets to use her yellow pillow for the night.

* * *

“What the hell happened to your head?” LaFontaine asks the next morning as Perry tuts over Carmilla’s forehead.

“That would be your lead singer.”

The three of them look across the tiny kitchen to the two bunks on the opposite wall: Laura’s obviously not slept in, and Carmilla’s currently occupied by Laura. She has one leg dangling over the side, one arm wrapped around the yellow pillow, and her T-shirt is riding up. Correction: Carmilla’s T-shirt is riding up, showing off some surprisingly defined muscle across her abdomen. Carmilla is currently fighting two very different feelings. She’s more turned on by the idea of Laura wearing her clothes than she thought she would be, and she can’t wait to see how many shades of red Laura’s face will turn when she realizes that she fell asleep on top of Carmilla wearing a T-shirt that says Suck My Clit World Tour.

If it weren’t for the possible concussion, this would be one of the greatest mornings ever.

“You two engage in some kinky sex or something?” LaFontaine asks, grabbing the coffeepot and their Calm Down: the Drummer is Here mug.

“Nothing of the kind, sadly. Our brave leader came in completely smashed, tried to climb up to her bunk, and I saved her from peril and gravity or something. At great personal expense, I should add. How’s my head look, Doc?”

Perry frowns. “I don’t think you need the hospital, though it would make me feel better. You should definitely take it easy, though, and put some ice on it. And maybe don’t drink for a couple of days.”

“It’s a super huge knot,” LaFontaine says, bobbing their head. “Kind of badass.”

“Until you realize I got it losing to a piece of furniture because of a creampuff.” She wants to poke her forehead, but she’s already learned that lesson the first seven times her eyes crossed. When Perry places two pills in front of her, she considers protesting, decides her head hurts too much, and swallows the pills dry. It keeps Perry happy.

Their band is a lot better when Perry’s happy.

“Somebody needs to wake her up,” LaFontaine says. “Per, you probably should. Carmilla might strangle her.”

“Only in the bedroom, gingersnap. And never with others around.”

Perry rolls her eyes at the both of them as LaFontaine offers their hand for a high-five, which Carmilla doesn’t hesitate to give. They both watch, sipping their coffee, as Perry gently shakes Laura’s shoulder. She’s going to have a hangover the size of Texas, Carmilla’s sure. There was no way Laura remembered to hydrate without Perry around. It’ll be almost enough to make up for the fact that Laura Hollis is the cuddliest drunk on the planet, and also pretty damn handsy.

Laura wakes up and yawns, sitting up slowly before she seems to realize where she is. “Huh,” she says. “This is new.”

She sounds remarkably not hungover. Carmilla’s eyes narrow.

Laura looks around and takes in the duo at the table. “Did I steal your bed?” she asks Carmilla, pulling her shirt down before she stretches.

“While I was in it,” Carmilla says. “How’s your head, cupcake?”

Laura tilts the object in question and shuts her eyes while she thinks about it. “Seems okay,” she says. “Which is basically a miracle because Danny likes super strong beer. My mouth tastes like the floor of a brewery right now. I need, like, fifty breath mints.”

Carmilla suspects that LaFontaine is laughing at her pain, but it’s quiet laughter, so maybe she won’t murder them.

“There’s pancakes!” Perry says.

Laura’s entire face lights up and she scrambles out of Carmilla’s bed. She makes it two steps before she stops in her tracks and looks down at her shirt.

 _There it is_ , Carmilla thinks as the blood drains out of Laura’s face.

“Just how much do you remember about last night?” Carmilla asks because while she may not be a soul-sucking abyss of awfulness, she’s still not that nice. And Laura did possibly give her a concussion. “I like the shirt. I’d say it looks better on you, but I’m really hot, so.”

Laura screws her face up. “Oh my god.”

“Uh, Laura, what are you doing?” LaFontaine asks when Laura doesn’t move for a full thirty seconds.

“Willing the floor to swallow me whole because I’m pretty sure I drunkenly assaulted a member of my crew last night after I stole her clothes.”

“It’s just Carmilla. Assault is like foreplay to her.” LaFontaine pauses. “Or is that battery? I always get the two mixed up.”

“I swear, you hit one person in the face with a sword,” Carmilla says under her breath. She takes pity on Laura, who might actually spontaneously combust if she gets any redder, and grabs a fistful of her own shirt to tug Laura down onto the bench next to her. “You could’ve just said if you wanted to sleep with me, you know. No need for liquid courage beforehand or anything.”

Laura grimaces and surprises Carmilla by burying her face in her shoulder. “Be nice,” she says, her voice muffled. She draws back to gawk at Carmilla’s face. “Wait, what happened to your head?”

“You did,” Carmilla says, and Laura moans. 

“She hit her head on the underside of the bunk because you fell on top of her,” LaFontaine says, grinning with absolutely no repentance. Carmilla would glare, but she’s distracted from glowering by the feel of cool fingers on her forehead, gently probing the area around the bump. 

The front door of the bus bangs open and Jeep and the giants lumber in, no doubt lured by the scent of pancakes. “Wow, things are really exciting on this bus, I see,” Danny says as she awkwardly folds her frame down to sit at the table with the rest of them. She squints at Carmilla’s forehead. “Did you get in a bar fight?”

“I wish. It’s this one’s fault.”

“Oh.” Danny pauses. “I’ll tell people you got it in a bar fight, if you want?”

“You’re being too nice,” Carmilla says, squinting back. “Why are you being nice?”

Danny looks at Laura. “You haven’t talked to her?”

“I just woke up,” Laura says. “Are you sure you shouldn’t put some ice on that?”

Carmilla shakes her head and leans back a little to get away from Laura’s fingertips. “It’s fine, I’m fine. What does Taylor Swift’s less attractive redheaded sister want you to talk to me about?”

She sees Danny mouth ‘Seriously?’ at Laura, but whatever, she’s a little concussed, her nicknames and insults don’t have to be on point today. “I know all of you have a break coming up after your show,” Danny says, giving Perry a grateful nod as she’s handed a plate of pancakes. “And Summer Soc is hitting the road for another leg of our own tour, so I was thinking Laura might want to come along for a couple of shows, just to hang out. And our sound mixer—”

“Should be fired out of a cannon into a new career field entirely,” Carmilla says.

Laura doesn’t elbow her, but only because Carmilla can feel her trying to stifle a laugh. Danny, on the other hand, scowls. “I was going to say, she needs some help, and you’re clearly very talented. We want you to fix our setup.”

Carmilla thinks about it. “Pass.”

“I talked to the girls and we’re willing to pay you double whatever these losers are paying you.”

“You wish you were as cool as us, D-Bear,” Kirsch says around a mouthful of pancakes.

“Chew with your mouth shut, Cave-Bro,” Carmilla says. “Not gonna be hard to double what they’re paying me. It’ll still be zero.”

Silence falls over the kitchen.

“We’re not paying you?” Laura asks, a piece of pancake forgotten halfway to her mouth. Around the table, Kirsch, LaFontaine, and Perry wear similarly gobsmacked expressions, and Jeep frowns. “What the hell, Carm?”

“What part of ‘the studio is blackmailing me into doing this or else they’ll press charges against me’ is so difficult for you twerps to understand?”

“The studio should still be _paying_ you!”

“Gods, I don’t care. I have a trust fund, I make more in interest daily than I do on any gig.” Carmilla frowns and puts her hand to her forehead. “What the hell? Why am I admitting this? I may actually have a concussion.”

She has no idea how any of it happens, but eight hours later, she’s trudging along, duffle bag over one shoulder as she follows Laura to the Summer Society bus. Laura has called the label and given them an earful about their treatment of her—though Carmilla hardly cares—and they’ve waved the others off the airport for their vacation back in Styria. Apparently Laura’s headed there in a week, and Danny and the others are willing to drop Carmilla off at any airport that will let her go back to New York.

“It’ll be fun,” Laura says as she traipses along with her guitar case and her carpetbag (what is she, Mary Poppins?) and a canvas backpack. “And you’re doing them a super-big favor.”

“Not doing it for them,” Carmilla says, and Laura trips. Carmilla catches her by the elbow and laughs at the huffy noise Laura makes. “They’ve got a Cochrane Venue board. Do you know how long I have waited to get my hands on one of those? Goddammit, why is the good equipment always wasted on the incompetents?”

“Shh, don’t say that about SJ.”

Carmilla bites her tongue before she can retort that she meant the band in general, as she’s going to be on their bus for a week. Plus, Danny did offer to tell everybody Carmilla got the goose-egg on her forehead in a bar fight and that’s surprisingly decent of somebody who might be a redheaded yeti masquerading as a second-rate singer.

Of course, she has ulterior motives, too, so Carmilla’s not going to cut her _that_ much slack.

“So, Summer Soc,” Laura says as they walk along. “SJ’s very sweet. And you know Danny. Elsie’s their drummer, she’s—self-confident, if maybe not the most talkative? Elsie is a person that must be experienced to be understood.”

“I like her already,” Carmilla says since Laura seems to need a response. She scowls as one of her boots slips. The worst thing about these festivals is the mud that gets everywhere. Why can’t people just go to some grungy bar and get hepatitis there like proper fans? Why does nature need to be added to the mix?

“Mel’s the bass. She’s very intense, and she and Danny never agree on anything, so be prepared for that. But they’re all great. I toured with them a couple of times before LMR signed me and I was too busy with _In the Light_ to go with them last time, but I really love it. They’re so chill and so nice.”

Carmilla grunts at that. Nobody’s chill and nice to each other after living on a bus together for more than a day, so she’ll see the real Summer Society before too long. And she figures they’ll let her down even before that.

She’s not wrong.

“I’m sorry, what?” Laura says before the bus is even rolling out of the parking lot.

Danny shoves both hands through her hair. “There’s only one free bunk. I mean, there’s a couch, and I can take that, it’s perfectly fine.”

Carmilla looks at the very short couch in question. “Only if you’re really good at Tetris.”

“She’s got a point,” Laura says. “You keep your bunk. I’ll take the couch. I mean, it makes sense. Carmilla’s here to work—and to _get paid for it_ —” She’s really not going to let that go, Carmilla sees. “—and I’m the one tagging along. I’ll be fine.”

Danny looks uncertainly at Carmilla. “Hey, I’ve learned not to try and change her mind,” Carmilla says, holding up her hands. “The cupcake wants what the cupcake wants.”

There’s no way in hell Laura’s sleeping on the couch, she decides. But she shrugs, dumps her duffle bag in the storage under the spare bunk, and heads back to the little galley kitchen for the band meeting. “So,” she says, reclining indolently against the refrigerator as she looks at her temporary employers. “What do you guys want to sound like?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LaFontaine's mug is a real thing you can purchase! Thank you, Google.


	4. Stop, Don’t Stop, Don’t Stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from _Don’t Stop_ by Foster the People.

Because she’s not busy holding up her end of the tour, which is scrambling to do radio interviews in whichever town they’re in, or as much publicity as she can, or prepping for the concert, Laura gets a front row seat to watch Carmilla work and it’s an illuminating experience. She’s expecting more than a little sarcasm whenever Carmilla deals with a request from the band—and to be fair, she provides that in spades—but Carmilla also  _listens_ , both to the mix and to the band members. The first day, they arrive early at the venue and Carmilla reviews each piece of equipment individually, using Laura and SJ as stevedores because the band has to film one of the midday local shows. She’s her usual surly self about it, but Laura’s so interested in watching her process that she doesn’t even mind being snapped at repeatedly. As she sorts through the mess, Carmilla quizzes Laura about what she remembers from playing with the band before, asking questions Laura would never have thought about, about how much Danny moves around stage, where does Mel prefer her pedals, what kind of effects does Elsie prefer? She rearranges the guitar cabinets and redirects the amps so they’re no aimed longer downward.

Laura tilts her head over that one.

“Your girlfriend is a skyscraper, cupcake,” Carmilla says without looking at her. “And she doesn’t have ears on her knees. You have to be able to hear what you’re doing on stage if you want the audience to have a good show.”

“Huh,” Laura says.

Carmilla shakes her head, looking amused. “Musicians,” she says, shaking her head as she walks away.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Laura says, but Carmilla’s already backstage.

By the time the others arrive for sound check, Carmilla seems a little more satisfied with their setup, though she’s as prickly as ever. She’s such a fascinating bundle of contradictions that Laura just wants to poke around in her brain sometimes. She can be so mean and condescending, but she also really knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t appear to take any pride in her work, but she’s possessive over the board and the mix and she’s careful with every detail. And while she may roll her eyes and drip sarcasm all over the place, when Danny makes a request about a song, Carmilla makes it happen.

Laura’s supposed to stay in the green room during the show—she’s resting her voice—but a few minutes after they let the crowd in, she takes one of Danny’s Summer Soc caps and sneaks out into the house. “Hi.”

Carmilla looks up from the iPod she’s thumbing through. “Nice disguise.”

“I know, I’m very chic. I thought I’d find you out here reading a book or something, being all disaffected or what have you.”

“Musicians,” Carmilla says for the third or fourth time, but there’s a teasing note. “My job isn’t just while you’re playing, you know. I have to check the room. Even you know there’s a difference between an empty room and a full one, all these warm unwashed bodies soaking up the delicious reverb.”

“So how do you do that?” Laura leans closer.

Carmilla pulls another stool from under the desk and pushes it over, tugging Laura close when she sits down. “Playlist,” she says. “A couple time-honored classics and a few songs similar to whoever’s playing. Summer Society’s your basic lady rip-off of Foster the People, so—”

“Hey. They have their own sound.”

“Keep telling yourself that, princess. I put this together last night.” Carmilla points at one of the monitors, all of which are full of charts that Laura only half-understands. She taught herself to play guitar and piano because her father feared a tutor might murder her during lessons, so a lot of the time she feels uneducated when it comes to music, no matter how many people claim she’s got raw talent or how many books she reads. But Carmilla can spout musical theory off the top of her head and she understands mixing in a way that’s actually beyond intimidating. Luckily the screen she’s pointing at now is only a playlist. “Now I have to listen so I’ll know what to watch out for later. It’s easy.”

“I always pictured you out here falling asleep and waiting for us to start,” Laura says. “You always sound bored over the earpiece.”

“I am bored, sweetheart.”

“You are not, sound nerd.” Laura leans in to get a look at the playlist, trying to ignore the rather distracting perfume Carmilla’s wearing. “Ha, there’s one of mine on here. You softie. You  _do_  like  _Won’t Say Go_.”

“I have no feelings on it one way or the other. It sounds closest to the Summer Soc stuff.”

“That makes sense, actually. Danny helped me write it while I was touring with them.” Laura catches the twitch in Carmilla’s face and figures she’s never seeing  _Won’t Say Go_  on a Carmilla-created playlist ever again. “I had a good time writing it, and that time in my life was pretty great, even if things didn’t work out between Danny and me.”

Carmilla doesn’t look up from the board. “And to think I was really pulling for you two.”

“Danny’s great, but…” Laura shrugs away an entire summer of angst. “The Summer Soc sisters were the first ones that took a chance on me when I auditioned to open for them. I thought for sure they’d say no and now look at me. It’s always strange to think about the journeys we take to get where we are.”

“Somebody’s feeling philosophical tonight.”

“Maybe a little. How about you? What journey led you here?”

“I hit somebody in the face with a sword.”

“I mean before that. You’re stupidly good at all of this, and even though you’re a genius and you understand all of that Kierke-whatever crap you read on the bus, even you probably weren’t able to sit down one day and know everything there was to live-mixing. I know literally nothing about you. How’d you get so good at it?”

Carmilla looks up from the monitor and meets her gaze and it’s weirdly heavy. “You really want to know,” she says, and it should be a question, but it sounds more wondering than that. Then the moment breaks as she shrugs one bare shoulder. “Tell you what, meet me out here after the show. I’ll take you someplace special and you can hear the entire sordid tale of the saddest little producer’s daughter. But for now, shoo. I have to work.”

Laura bounces to her feet, trying to ignore the sensation of butterflies in her middle. It’s not a date. It’s totally a date. Boldly, she gives Carmilla a kiss on the cheek. “I bet it’s not as sad as you think it is, sound nerd,” she says, and walks away humming.

* * *

It doesn’t take much to convince the bartender to part with a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. Getting them to her planned destination is much more difficult, especially since she’s towing a now-reluctant Laura.

“Your ‘someplace special’ is the bus?” she asks, tilting her head to the side and furrowing her brow.

“Lower your standards some. What were you expecting, a five star hotel?”

Laura starts blushing, which makes Carmilla laugh. A hotel room isn’t actually out of the question because the last thing Carmilla wants to do is sleep with Laura for the first time on a bus that smells like Danny Archer Fowler and her slightly shorter sisters.

Ha, she’ll have to remember that one. Obscure and insulting. Perfect.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting the bus,” Laura says, distracting Carmilla away from her own genius. “We’re going to be on this thing for a week, Carm. Can’t we just go to a Denny’s or something that’s still open?”

“You need to have a little more faith.” Carmilla slings the little tote bag over her shoulder and goes around to the side. She climbs up onto the wheel and uses a window ledge, easily hauling herself up to the roof. She leans over to offer Laura a hand up. “Well, you coming?”

“I cannot believe I’m doing this.” But Laura takes Carmilla’s hand quickly enough, letting her pull her up onto the roof. She doesn’t let go when she’s safely atop the bus, though. Instead, she tugs Carmilla toward the middle, where neither of them is likely to fall off, and raises an eyebrow when Carmilla fumbles a blanket out of the bag. “You’re prepared. It’s almost like you’ve done this before.”

She has, but that’s not the point. “I mean, if you want to sit atop the dirty bus without a blanket, by all means have at it.”

Laura giggles and helps her spread out the blanket, sitting cross-legged with her chin propped up on her fists as Carmilla unloads the rest of the bag. “Does revealing the secrets of your mysterious past always involve champagne and…” She picks up the tin Carmilla sets down. “Honey roasted peanuts?”

“I’m working on a deadline here.” Normally, Carmilla would slice open the bottle with a knife—her favorite method for champagne—but instead she fiddles with the metal twisty thing over the cork. “Besides, those are sweet and I’ve never met a sugary confection you’ve ever turned down, cupcake.”

“You calling me all these edible nicknames kind of makes me sound like a cannibal,” Laura says, opening the tin and popping a handful into her mouth. “Just FYI. Ooh, thank you. All they had backstage was beer and after the other night, I’m off that for a while. I’m much less likely to assault my friends with champagne.”

“Cheers to that,” Carmilla says, tapping her glass against Laura’s. She’s only been pre-gaming a little because even she knows better than to climb on top of a tour bus while drunk, so she takes a healthy swallow. Getting safely off the bus is future Carmilla’s problem. She leans back on her elbows and tips her head back, enjoying the residual high from mixing a good show and the starlight overhead. Laura’s been playing mostly larger cities, so she hasn’t had much of a chance to stargaze much. It’s silly to be a New Yorker who misses the stars, but that’s her lot in life.

Laura settles in, not close enough so that they’re touching, but clearly comfortable. “It was nice to have a day off,” she says.

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am. The band sounded great, though. I sneaked out and listened to some of the crowds and somebody commented that that’s the best they’ve heard Danny sound. Clearly you’re a genius.”

“Clearly.”

Laura wriggles about and pokes Carmilla in the ribs. “So?”

“So what, cupcake?”

“So there’s a story there, and you promised to share it.”

“A promise I’m regretting deeply in this moment.” Carmilla traces her favorite constellations with a finger. Tennessee might be the worst state in the union, but the night is clear and pretty and they’re not anywhere near Nashville. Just the thought of that town makes her want to drink heavily. “What do you even want to know, buttercup? There’s not much to tell. I know how to manipulate a bunch of switches on a board so pretty noises come out. Big deal.”

“I think we can safely say what you do with a mix is more than manipulating a bunch of switches.” Laura’s elbow dig is gentle, at least. Though Carmilla has to smile when she hears Laura’s elbow slip. If only her adoring “Hollistinians” or whoever the hell they are knew exactly how clumsy their idol can be. “You obviously learned it somewhere. So where was that?”

“Juilliard.”

Laura actually squeaks. “Seriously?”

“Don’t sound so intimidated. I dropped out after a year.” 

“I _am_ intimidated, though.” Laura sits up and tilts her head all the way back to look up at the stars. “You play guitar like you were born with one in your hands, you know every piece of musical theory there is to know, I haven’t even heard of half the bands you name-drop, and now I find out you went to frickin’ Juilliard!”

“Dropped out of Juilliard. There’s a difference, cupcake.”

“Sure, cutie, there’s a difference,” Laura says in the most godawful impression of Carmilla ever. 

Carmilla tugs on the back of Laura’s tank top until she settles back down. “I only went because Mother wanted to mold me into the perfect little musician. Wasn’t my scene, which became obvious when I kept sneaking out to hit up terrible bars and get in fights.”

“Of course you did,” Laura says. 

“It ended up biting me in the ass. I started a fight with a sound tech, and instead of letting me pay for the damages, the bar owner made me take over the board when the tech quit.” Carmilla finishes her champagne and instead of pouring more, lays down with her head pillowed on her crossed arms. “I was such an idiot. Back then I thought ‘just make it loud, nobody cares’ so I boosted the gain all the way up. I’m amazed that band didn’t kick my ass.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Laura mimics her again, laying down all the way and propping one foot up on the other. “Your humble beginnings with sound engineering are both the super fanciest school and a bar fight.”

“Taking that as a compliment. Anyway, the owner offered me all the beer I could drink and fifty bucks a gig, and it was the first time I’d ever earned a paycheck, so…” Carmilla shrugs. It had never really been about the amount of money, as her adoptive father had seen to it that all of his children were set up with obscene amounts of money—that Lilita couldn’t touch—before he’d passed. It had been about something that was hers and not her mother’s. “I kept going back and eventually I realized that maybe ‘all the way loud’ wasn’t the best way for a band to sound. Dropped out, bought some second-hand equipment with my meager earnings, and I shopped my skills around until some bands bit. The rest is history.”

“History that I’d like to know.” Laura scoots a little closer. “You’ve toured before.”

“Yes. With…” Carmilla reaches for the champagne bottle and expertly pours herself another glass without sitting up. She gulps half of it down. No, she decides, she doesn’t want to tell that part of the story. “With my ex and her band. Ironically enough, I ended up working for my mother at that point because she came and dragged me out of my studio. My ex, not my mother.”

She can actually see Laura burning up with curiosity over the ex comment, but she only tilts her head. “Your studio?”

“I’ve got disposable income. Seemed like a good thing to have.”

“So you do in-studio mixing, too?”

“Are you angling from an invite, creampuff?” Carmilla asks, and Laura’s not quick enough to hide her sheepish expression, which only makes Carmilla laugh. “You are. Oh, that’s precious. I swear, you can buy a girl all the champagne you want and set up this incredibly fancy date, and all she wants out of you is to use your recording studio.”

“Hey, I want more than th—did you say this was a date?” Laura’s look turns skeptical. “We’re on the top of a bus eating canned peanuts and drinking champagne I’m pretty sure you stole from the bar. Is fancy really the word you want to use?”

She’d paid for the champagne, but if she could have, she would have stolen it, so maybe Laura really does have her number. Carmilla grins and rolls over onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. “You’re the one protesting the word fancy and not the word date,” she says, trailing the very tips of her fingers down Laura’s arm and watching goosebumps rise on her skin. When she looks back at Laura’s face, she can’t decipher the expression, but Laura’s pupils are huge. She looks like she’s actually stopped breathing. 

Her eyes dip down to Carmilla’s mouth, and just like that, Carmilla knows she’s a goner.

It’s Laura that closes the distance between them, rising up to meet Carmilla rather than tugging her down on top of her. For an instant, the angle’s awkward and Carmilla nearly gets a crick in her neck, but Laura angles in, her lips sliding over Carmilla’s. She tastes like the champagne. She tastes _better_ than the champagne.

Carmilla pulls back first, smiling a little when Laura whimpers and nearly tumbles forward onto her face. Carmilla steadies her with a hand on her shoulder, warmth spreading all over when Laura glances down at her lips again. “Carm, why’d you stop?”

She’d been checking to make sure Laura was okay, that she wasn’t freaking out, but now she wants to smirk. “Are you whining? That’s adorable—” 

This time Laura actually lunges, rolling on top of Carmilla. “Less talking. More kissing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Carmilla slides a hand into Laura’s hair, tangling her fingers in it and just taking a moment to enjoy how soft Laura’s lips feel. She could take forever in this moment, really: the cool night air, Laura pressed up against her, Laura’s hand cupping her face. Laura’s tongue pressing into her mouth. Carmilla almost wants to laugh when she feels Laura’s fingers fumble under her shirt. Any teasing comment dies a premature death, though, when Laura kisses her way down the line of Carmilla’s jaw. 

Riding the high from the champagne and being surrounded by Laura, Carmilla tugs with the hand still tangled in Laura’s hair, pulling her lips back down for an actual kiss. She keeps her other hand braced on Laura’s hip because she’s legitimately concerned the woman might roll off of her and off the side of the bus, but she can feel Laura shiver whenever her thumb traces lazy circles over Laura’s skin.

She has no idea how long they stay like that, kissing almost lazily while Laura’s hands roam under Carmilla’s shirt and while Carmilla does her best to make Laura whimper. She’s actually not in a hurry, even though they’re technically exposed to all of the elements and could be interrupted at any second. 

But she’s pretty sure she could spend an eternity kissing Laura, just enjoying the way she tastes and the little impatient noises she makes. It makes her want to smile.

Or it does until it starts raining.

“What the hell!”

Laura shrieks and rolls off of her as water splashes down on them, and only Carmilla’s quick thinking keeps her from getting too close to the edge of the bus. Still holding on to Laura, Carmilla squints at the sky, her head too foggy to put it together that she can still see the stars perfectly, even though water is pouring down on them in a steady stream.

Too steady of a stream, actually.

“Oh my god, I am going to kill her,” she says, letting go of Laura and scooting toward the edge of the bus. She expects Danny with a garden horse, not the blond on the ground. “What the hell is your problem?” 

Elsie shuts off the hose and gives Carmilla a bored look. “No sex on the party bus. We’re leaving in five minutes. Get down from there,” she says as she walks away. When Carmilla shouts her opinion of that, Elsie merely raises one finger and keeps going. 

Carmilla pushes her wet hair out of her face and sits down hard, breathing heavily from residual lust and being absolutely startled. A couple of feet away, Laura does the same, running both hands through her hair, and while it’s nice to see that her hands aren’t exactly steady either, Carmilla could cheerfully murder the damn drummer into a million pieces.

Laura looks up and meets her eye, a small grin poking at the edge of her lips. It spreads and she starts giggling, then outright laughing, until she’s laying on the sopping blanket, absolutely helpless with mirth. Carmilla shakes her head at first, but she can’t help it: she starts laughing, too.

“Drowned cat’s a good look on you, _cupcake_ ,” Laura says between snorts of laughter.

“Shut up.” Carmilla runs a hand through her hair and flicks water at her. “You’re as drenched as I am.”

“I know.” Laura makes a face and peels her wet tank top away from her skin and _goddammit, Elsie_. Carmilla wants to lean across the space and pick up where they left off, but she’s under no illusions where the drummer is concerned. They’ll get another rain shower and Laura will only get more soaked, which will only make her hotter. It’s like a damned self-perpetuating cycle. 

“C’mon, creampuff,” Carmilla says, tossing the wet blanket over the side of the bus and not even caring when it lands in a _glop_. “Let’s get down so I can get you a towel.”

She climbs off first, which isn’t easy with wet hands and her hair dripping uncomfortably down the back of her shirt, and turns to assist Laura—who stumbles right into Carmilla so that they’re frozen like two dancers in the strangest waltz ever. This time, Carmilla’s the one that breaks and looks at Laura’s lips, leaning in—

“No sex beside the party bus, either,” Elsie says as she walks by and steals the bottle of champagne from Laura’s hand. 

“Goddammit, Elsie,” Carmilla says, and Laura sighs and drops her forehead onto Carmilla’s shoulder. Carmilla combs some of the wet tangles of Laura’s hair out with her fingers, ignoring the fact that she’s dripping all over her. “You know, I set up their equipment already, SJ might know how to do things now. We can just leave the ‘party bus’ behind and find someplace more private.”

“As nice as that sounds, you did promise.”

“Let me know when you get tired of having that conscience, cupcake.” Carmilla sighs and tows Laura onto the bus so she can get them both towels.

Later on, when Laura starts to make her way from the dinner table to the couch, Carmilla snags her by the waist and pushes her into her bunk. It’s a tight squeeze and Laura insists they can’t do anything with the band members around—spoilsport—but Carmilla doesn’t mind being half-smothered.

She wakes up at 2:30 to find Laura sitting by her feet, quietly plucking away at her guitar. It gives her such an intense sensation of déjà vu that for a moment, she doesn’t know if she’s on the Summer Soc bus, or Laura’s bus, or even back with Ell. But then Laura looks over, whispers, “Go back to sleep, Carm,” and Carmilla grunts and rolls over. She’s too far gone to realize it’s not a song she recognizes.

* * *

Laura finishes the song at 5:30 in the morning, but any sense of accomplishment is immediately swamped by the physical and emotional feeling of being completely sucked dry. She looks at the notebook page and the messy scrawls—chord progressions, scribbled thoughts about a bridge, lyrics that she’ll hate after she’s had a chance to sleep, but she can feel the song in her bones. She yawns and sets the guitar down, stretching out her aching fingers. She pops her shoulders and her spine while on her bunk—well, it looks like it’s their bunk now—Carmilla doesn’t even stir. She doesn’t look peaceful in sleep, but Laura really didn’t expect her to. Even in slumber, her natural shield against the world won’t soften.

It’s what makes her so interesting to Laura. That sneer, the boredom, the anger, and underneath it all, a strange noble streak.

And she’s a really good kisser. Like, _really_ good.

Laura’s head is full of the song and Carmilla as she climbs out of the bunk, stretching. Songwriting sessions involve so much hunching. She should really unlearn that terrible habit, but reality abandons her during these intense sprints to finish a song, so it’s not like she’s conscious of the fact that she has the posture of a drunk hermit crab, even if she always pays for it the next morning.

At least the studio will be happy she’s writing again. She hasn’t produced anything new— _The Woman Who Stole My Pillow_ aside, which Lilita Morgan’s company is not going to go for—since she finished _In the Light_. There had been a fear, small and foolish but persistent, that made her wonder if she would ever write anything again, if selling out had somehow sapped away all of her creativity.

Apparently she hadn’t needed to worry. One too-brief moment rolling around on the top of a bus cut short by an awful shower later, here she has all of her songwriting chops back.

She pulls up short at finding Danny in the kitchen, hair curtaining around her face as she stares into a mug of tea. “Oh god,” Laura says, forgetting to keep her voice quiet. “I didn’t keep you up, did I?”

“My turn to drive next,” Danny says, yawning. “And no. But it’s nice. Laura Hollis is back. I heard you when I got up, but you didn’t even notice me.”

“Yeah, this one kind of had me in its thrall.”

“What’s the song about? Short, dark, and thirsty?”

“She’s going to adore that nickname, I can already tell.” Laura frowns. The song’s not precisely about Carmilla because, god, it would take an entire album and she’d barely be able to scratch the surface of what makes Carmilla tick. “No, it’s about the…I guess the paths we take to get to where we are, and how they’re never what we expect.”

“Sounds a little pretentious. You sure it’s not about Carmilla?”

Laura laughs and helps herself to some of the hot water left in the electric kettle. She prefers her cocoa with milk, but beggars can’t be choosers. “In a roundabout way, I guess it is. Not sure she’d appreciate having a song about her. She gets weird about stuff like that.”

“Or she’ll play it like an anthem every time she enters a room.”

“I’d better make sure it’s a good song, then.” She dumps in enough cocoa powder to make Danny wince and takes her time stirring it. She’s a little buzzy from kissing Carmilla. Since when has she wanted to do that? Probably from the first moment she saw Carmilla swagger into the meeting with the tour producers, if she’s really, truly honest with herself. There was a lot of also wanting to strangle her added to the mix. More so than what could reasonably be justified by the close and unglamorous nature of being on the road together.

And apparently she’s not alone in that, not from the way Carmilla responded earlier and the hints she keeps dropping about getting away from the Summer Soc and finding someplace more private. Laura’s not sure she’s ready for that—though she definitely was earlier, until Elsie’s cold shower had put a stop to it—if she’s honest with herself. There are certain aspects of the “rock star” life she never bought into, as she’s never liked drugs (some singers write the most amazing lyrics while high, she only took a nap and wanted cookies, which was remarkably like being sober) and she doesn’t hook up with groupies. Not that Carmilla is a groupie, not by long-shot. In fact, Laura’s pretty sure Carmilla doesn’t even like her music.

She can’t help but wonder why Carmilla’s never brought up her musician ex before, other than she’s Carmilla and nobody understands how her mind works. She’s not going to go and do a bunch of paranoid research about it just because the woman kissed her. She’s not that kind of person.

Though it’s got to be somebody repped by LMR, like Laura. Why else would Carmilla’s mother be involved? And what had happened?

“Laura?” Danny says, and Laura jolts. Danny takes the mug of cocoa out of her hand and places it safely on the table, taking the spoon away from her. “I think it’s mixed up enough now.”

Yeah, Laura thinks as she looks into the cocoa, it’s not the only one.

Before she heads to the front to take over driving, Danny offers her bunk. Laura considers it, as it’s rather cramped to share, but Carmilla will only be grumpy if she wakes up and finds her in Danny’s bunk. So she finishes her cocoa and blames the swaying on the gentle rhythm of the bus as she makes her way back to Carmilla’s bunk. The sound tech doesn’t even wake when Laura nudges her; she scoots over like she was only keeping Laura’s spot warm and angles her body up to make more room between her and the wall. Like she’s used to sharing such a small space, Laura thinks, but she’s tired and songwriting always leaves a blank, messy space in her head and she doesn’t want to dwell on that, so she crawls over Carmilla, puts her back to the wall and one arm across Carmilla, and lets exhaustion carry her off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you _sure_ the song’s not about Carmilla, Laura?


	5. It’s All Because of You

The problem with living in close quarters with four other women and working every night is that there’s not a damn lick of privacy anywhere to be found. That doesn’t mean they don’t make it work; Laura backs Carmilla into a wall at a surprisingly dive-y bar in Raleigh while SJ’s finally running the soundboard, Carmilla does her best to make Laura forget her own name in the green room before she has to go save SJ from a mixing goof, and of course there are stolen kisses in the middle of the night that leave Carmilla breathless and eager to leave this tour behind and go somewhere not constantly surrounded by four other women with varying levels of grumpiness due to the under-abundance of personal space. Especially since Laura refuses to hook up somewhere that’s not at least a little respectable.

“You’re supposed to be a rock star,” Carmilla grumbles at her after a show. She says it into Laura’s neck because they’re in their shared bunk, which is less a sexy experience and more mastering the art of sleeping very still while being half-crushed. “Hookups in questionable locations are part of the lifestyle, creampuff.”

“Going down on each other in a bathroom that I’m not sure has been cleaned in the past decade requires doing way more ecstasy than I’m willing to take, cupcake,” Laura whispers back, but she shivers when Carmilla kisses her way up her shoulder. “And stop that. I am way too loud in bed for this to go much further.”

“My god.” It’s enough to have Carmilla closing her eyes tight. “Why do you have to tell me that? Play fair, Hollis.”

“Just want to make sure you miss me.”

And the problem is, four days later, is that Carmilla does.

True to their word, the Summer Soc dropped Laura off in Styria—though Carmilla went with her, as LaFontaine and Perry wanted to meet them for lunch and had promised to take Carmilla to the airport. Laura had invited Carmilla over to stay at her father’s house, but no way in hell is Carmilla ever doing a meet the parents thing, especially when she hasn’t even successfully talked the girl into bed. So now she sits in her place in New York with takeout from her favorite Thai place down the street. She’s missed her house, as it’s everything the bus is not: spacious, airy, and private. And she can’t deny that it’s very nice to be able to move while she sleeps (she may or may not have slept spread out like a starfish last night).

Her phone rings. She raises her eyebrow when she sees that it’s a video call from the subject of her thoughts herself.

She hits the accept call button. “Can’t talk you into hooking up in a perfectly acceptable green room, but you’re totally down for Skype and chill, creampuff?”

Laura rolls her eyes. “Trust you to lead with that. You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“Please. I’ve got way more tracks than that,” Carmilla says.

There’s a pause. “Did you just make a sound engineering joke?”

“No. Where are you? It’s kind of dark, I can’t tell.” She can make out Laura’s face because it’s lit up by the phone screen, but everything else is pitch black. 

“Oh, sorry.” The phone wobbles as a light behind Laura’s shoulder comes on. “Better?”

“Yes because now I can mock the—is that a polo shirt with a teddy bear?” Carmilla squints, ignoring the fact that Laura has a guitar in her lap. “What on earth?”

“Shut up, it’s laundry day.”

“Doesn’t excuse you from owning that shirt in the first place. And were you sitting in the dark with a guitar? Seriously goth, cutie.”

Laura’s exasperated look turns into a glare. “Excuse you, it got dark around me, I was here first. I was finishing a song and forgot things like needing to be able to see. So—miss me yet?”

“Somebody’s full of herself.”

“That’s Carmilla-speak for yes.” Laura’s smile blooms when Carmilla rolls her eyes. “It’s okay, Carm, you can admit that you can’t stop thinking about me.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

Laura waves at the phone. “No, no, wait. I want to play this song for you. That’s why I called in the first place. I’ve been thinking about it for _hours_.”

“Don’t burst a blood vessel, cutie. I’ll listen to your song.” She knows Laura’s been working on something—she’d woken up often enough on the Summer Soc bus to hear Laura strumming away—but she hadn’t pressed. She props the phone on a battered copy of _Kim_ on her counter so she can dig into her dinner before it gets too cool. On the other end of the line, she can see Laura doing the same thing, so she has both hands free to play the guitar. 

“Ready to have your mind blown?” Laura asks with a smile that is surprisingly devious.

“If you must,” Carmilla says.

Laura starts to play a song that sounds way too familiar to be her new one. Even before she sends a sly grin at the camera, Carmilla narrows her eyes in suspicion. It turns out she’s right when Laura sings, “Hey, there Carmilla, what’s it like in New York City, I’m a thousand miles away, but girl, tonight you look so pretty, yes you do—”

“Ugh,” Carmilla says because Plain White Ts, seriously? She hits the end call button. She could have gone her entire life without putting it together that her name has the same number of syllables as Delilah. 

Less than half a minute later, she gets a text: _can’t believe you hung up on me!!!! I had a whole chorus and everything._

 _I’m sending you a playlist_ , Carmilla texts back, _of actual good music. Please study it and attempt to apologize before you assault my eardrums again with that drivel._

 _Snob_.

 _Dork_.

Laura sends an emoji with the little hearts for eyes and goes silent, which makes Carmilla smile before she puts the food away and goes to lose herself in some Liszt or something. She definitely needs a palate cleanser. It’s nice to see Laura’s smiling face, but she’s under no illusions that Laura will find some way to play that whole damn song at her if she calls back.

God, why is she even attracted to this woman? None of this makes any sense.

In the morning, she takes a walk around her neighborhood even though it’s already hot as balls outside. All the sensible people have fled to the Vineyard or the Hamptons, which is why she’s comfortable being home. Her mother is no doubt in Southampton entertaining the new artist du jour and watching polo, which is the most fucking boring sport on the planet. She slips her headphones in, buys a Jarrito soda from the deli on the corner, and even though the air is sweaty and stale she enjoys herself.

Her eyebrows go into her hairline at the sight awaiting her on her front porch. She decides for her own sanity, she won’t read into the fact that her heart leaps. Instead, she saunters up the rest of the block and pushes her headphones down to her neck.

“To what do I owe the surprise, cutie?” she asks.

Laura, sitting against her guitar case with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes closed, jolts awake. “Carm? Carm!”

She launches herself and even though Carmilla is _not_ the person that indulges herself in swinging-around hugs, she doesn’t have much of a choice. Laura hits like a linebacker and so they look like idiots, spinning around on the sidewalk while Laura clings to her neck. Laura squeezes her once for good measure and bounces back, her hands sliding down Carmilla’s arms to grip her elbows. “I swear, one _Hey There, Carmilla_ and you don’t answer your phone anymore?” Laura asks.

“I turned it off last night. I’m on vacation, remember?” Though really, she should just agree if it’ll keep Laura from inserting her name into cheesy pop songs. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, obviously. And maybe see if I could get some studio time in the city because my song’s finished and there’s not really a good facility in Styria, but mostly—you.” Laura takes a deep breath. “I was just about to go find a hotel.”

“You were taking a nap on my front stoop,” Carmilla says.

“Well, yes, after that. I…”

Carmilla can hear the nerves clearly, which would amuse her if her own stomach hadn’t started jumping at the sight of Laura. She cups her face with both hands and leans in, pressing her lips against Laura’s. Staying in a hotel, her ass.

“Or you could skip that and come inside,” she says.

“Or I could do that.”

* * *

Flying to New York on impulse is a milestone.

Her career’s full of them. Her first show, her first opening act, first time recognized on the street, the first time a song passed a thousand views on YouTube, the first time a song hit a hundred thousand views. Signing a contract with LMR. Her first studio-produced album.

Her first tour.

Her first time impulsively buying a plane ticket and winding up in New York City. 

She’s aware she makes a decent living and she has money to burn (not a lot, and less than most people think, but for somebody used to living hand to mouth, having more than fifty bucks in her bank account is a luxury), but she’s not somebody that throws money around. Buying a first class plane ticket to New York is out of character for her, but it’s also adult and real and weirdly enough, as important a milestone as the first time she sat down in a studio with her producers for _In the Light_. Maybe she needs to examine her priorities, but she hardly cares, not when Carmilla’s tugging on her arm and pulling her back up her front steps.

If asked three weeks prior where Carmilla lived, Laura might have said some terrible walk-up in some hipster place with four or five other housemates. The reality is so far removed from that Laura would be reeling if she weren’t so tired from getting up before dawn to catch her flight. The street is stately and nothing like Carmilla in personality, lined with brownstones that probably cost more than Laura will ever make unless her career _really_ takes off.

Laura wants to ask why here and not somewhere trendier, but instead she sets her battered guitar case with its Peace Frog stickers from eighth grade down inside Carmilla’s forum and looks around. She’s always been under the impression that these old houses are supposed to be stately and antique, but Carmilla’s place is airy, modern, and open, spartan almost to the point of making Laura wonder if she’s ever truly moved in. But there are little touches she does live there: a battered paperback next to a half-empty cup on the coffee table and a burgundy blanket crumpled on one of the cushions.

Laura steps past the gramophone on an Ikea cart in the front hallway. “So,” she says. “Do I get a tour?”

“It’s a house. It has stuff inside it.” Carmilla waves that off, back to being frustratingly opaque again. Whatever. “Kitchen’s that way, there’s really nothing in the fridge because I haven’t been here. Bedroom’s upstairs, there are bathrooms, they all have stuff.”

“Such a considerate hostess,” Laura says. “I’m giving this place four stars on AirBNB. I can see the review now. ‘Has bathrooms. They all have stuff.’ You’re going to be super popular.”

“This is what you really want to see,” Carmilla says, and her palm is cold from her soda as she grabs Laura by the hand. She nudges open a door with her shoulder and they head downstairs into the basement, where Laura promptly begins to drool.

When Carmilla said she had some equipment, she’d been underplaying things. Because Laura steps off of the staircase and into a fully functional studio with soundproofing gear, a board with more knobs and switches than she could count, and an actual sound booth with several microphones half set up and a digital piano and full drum kit shoved into the corners.

“Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch,” Laura says. She knows she’s gaping, but she can’t seem to stop herself. “What the _what_ , Carmilla.”

“Like what you see?” Carmilla sits down at the little stool at the board and looks smug, which should not be hot. Here is all the decoration that the rest of the house lacks, Laura realizes as she looks around the main part of the studio. Bookshelves line the wall, full of LP records and what look like battered coffee table music books. Guitars hang neatly between them.

Laura feels all of the saliva pool in her mouth. “Is that…”

“1967 Strat, yeah.” 

“Can I…can I touch it?”

“Sure. Don’t perv on it or anything.”

“Carm.” But Laura’s pretty sure the adulation on her face as she lovingly strokes the teal curve of the guitar is probably considered pornographic. Piano might be her first instrument, but she has a thing for the classics. And it’s not surprising that Carmilla would gravitate toward a Stratocaster if her first go-to song on the guitar is the solo from _Comfortably Numb_. She certainly exudes David Gilmour’s cockiness often enough. Laura steps away from the Strat and nearly coos over the Gibson Les Paul on the back wall. “What was your first guitar?”

“It was an old Yamaha that one of Mother’s musicians shoved at me, probably to get me to be quiet,” Carmilla says. “I trashed it when I went through my Who phase.”

Laura can feel herself lighting up. “You started with a Yamaha, too?”

“They’re a popular brand, cupcake, it’s not that exciting.”

“I know that.” Laura pokes through some of the LPs, which are as eclectic and varied as the rest of Carmilla. “But still, it’s still kind of nice. Mine’s upstairs. It belonged to my mom and I can definitely afford a better guitar—and I do have a couple—but…I don’t know. It’s nice to have a connection to her. I named her Helga. The guitar, not my mother.”

“I figured.”

“After the founder of Hufflepuff—”

“You know when you tell me things like this, any cred you’ve built up as a rock star goes straight out the window, right?” Carmilla twirls around on the stool once, looking bored. She pushes herself to her feet and comes over to stand beside Laura, a hair closer than she needs to be. “So, what do you think? Suitably impressive?”

“I’m trying not to drool,” Laura says, though really she’s trying not to think about how close Carmilla is standing or how great she smells or that it’s been a very, very long week and a half since they kissed on top of that bus. She catches the glint in Carmilla’s eye. “Are you using your super fancy studio to seduce me?”

Carmilla moves a little closer. “The answer to that question depends on if it’s working or not.”

Laura could lie if she wanted to and keep telling herself she’d impulse-bought that plane ticket to come in and find studio space to record her new song. But really, she’s in the city for this moment right here, with Carmilla crowding her space and looking unabashedly at her lips.

“It’s incredibly lame that you think I’m going to get all hot and bothered over a music studio,” she says instead of doing what she wants to do, which is push Carmilla up against the bookcase and kiss her until the smirk goes away.

“So it _is_ working.”

“Please shut up,” Laura says, and closes the distance between them. She gets some satisfaction in the fact that Carmilla draws in a surprised breath, but it’s not enough. In less than a minute, Carmilla has her pushed back against the bookshelf instead, nipping at Laura’s bottom lip. Her hands tug at Laura’s shirt, impatiently, like she can’t believe Laura tucked it in at all. It makes Laura smile until Carmilla bites at her earlobe.

“Totally working,” Carmilla says as Laura backs her onto a battered couch. She laces her fingers through Laura’s belt loops and tugs her down on top of her.

Laura sits back on her ankles. “I’m sorry, do you want to get laid or not?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll shut up.”

* * *

Carmilla nudges her bedroom door open with a shoulder and wants to snicker. No wonder she’s never able to move whenever Laura’s in her bunk, if that’s the way Laura sprawls over a queen-sized mattress. As possible revenge for the number of times Carmilla’s stolen her prized pillow, Laura is now cuddling one of Carmilla’s pillows and clutching the other one. “Bed hog and bunk hog,” Carmilla says, smiling as Laura stirs. She sets the stacked styrofoam containers down on the nightstand next to the beers dangling between her fingers. “It figures, creampuff.”

“Are you still going to use the edible pet names even after everything we just did to each other?” Laura’s voice sounds drowsy. She rolls over and squints at Carmilla. “Why are you wearing clothes?”

“Somebody had to answer the door. I tip well, but answering the door naked’s too much of a good tip to waste on some random delivery person.”

“Mm.” Laura snuggles down into the pillow. “Smells good. What is it? Is it cupcakes? I could go for a cupcake right now.”

“It’s real food. Better for your pancreas.”

Laura stretches out, groaning. “But cupcakes are life, Carm.”

“It concerns me when you say things like that.” She crawls onto the bed, nudging Laura with her knee so she’ll move over, and grabs the first container. This being New York, there’s a plethora of take-out options and usually she’d try something a little fancier to impress a girl she’s slept with for the first time, but she’s also lived in close quarters with Laura for a month and they’ve definitely seen each other at their worst and their smelliest. So fish and chips it is because Carmilla is craving something greasy and the Lustig down the street has the _best_ beer battered fish on the planet, though she knows of several British musicians who would argue tooth and nail over that assertion. Whatever, she doesn’t care. She rips open a little packet of ketchup and liberally covers her fries.

Laura finally sits up as Carmilla uses the little plastic packet of malt vinegar on her fish. Disappointingly, she hugs the sheet to her chest. Carmilla obligingly hands her the second container, and a beer.

“Okay,” Laura says, after they’ve both ripped into the fish with their fingers, not bothering with the plastic forks. She licks her thumb clean. “I take back my request for cupcakes instead of this. S’pretty good.”

“I miss it whenever I’m out touring,” Carmilla says. “Nobody else gets the batter right.”

“And you wanted to share with me? Awww.” 

“Cupcake, this is refueling for more sex, this is not a cute moment.”

Laura only hums and smiles. “You got me your favorite. I think you like me.”

“You’re of no use to me when you’re passing out from lack of food. I have needs.”

“Sure, Carm.” 

It’s hard to be grumpy when Laura keeps sneaking smiles that are an intriguing mix of shy and devious at her, though. And she’s not blind: she sees the way Laura’s eyes linger on her, the gaze turning slightly heated. For all that she’s teased Laura about being a really terrible example of a rock star, she _does_ seem to have the libido of one. Carmilla’s not actually sure when they moved from the couch to her bedroom, but she knows with the mental images she’s now got saved away, Laura’s shows are going to be a lot more fun.

“Stop smiling at me like that,” she says, though. 

“Make me.” Laura stuffs two fries in her mouth and grins around them like she’s some kind of kid. She head-butts Carmilla’s shoulder with her forehead. “Hey, Carm?”

She’s going to regret this. “Yes?”

“We had sex.” Laura sings it because of course she does.

“Goddammit, Laura.”

“It was great sex. That we had.”

“This is actually sickening. I’m trying to eat here.”

“It’s okay, Carm.” Laura mercifully and finally lets go of the sheet to lay a hand on her shoulder. “I know you’re squealing inside just as much as I am. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Okay, that’s it.” She’s not done eating, but she’ll just have to reheat everything up later and deal with the fact that reheated fries are actually the work of the devil. She sets her dinner off to the side, grabs Laura’s, and shoves it onto the nightstand as well. 

“What are you doing?”

“Obviously stuffing your face full of food won’t get you to stop talking, so I’m doing the one thing I know that will.” Carmilla peels the sheet away from Laura and straddles her hips, feeling a vicious jolt of victory when Laura actually looks startled. She starts at the spot on Laura’s neck that she’s discovered makes her absolutely breathless and works her way down, slowly and torturously, until Laura is gasping and nearly writhing. She still won’t actually swear and she says weird things like “Holy Hogwarts” when she’s not screaming Carmilla’s name, but at least she’s stopped singing about them having sex, and that’s really all Carmilla wanted in the first place—that and Laura herself, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, Carmilla, you sap. There's a scene I cut from this chapter that you can find [on my Tumblr](http://freaoscanlin.tumblr.com/post/135079190559/mixed-up-outtake-scene-rated-pg-13-ish-no). I still consider it "canon" to this verse, but it messed up my pacing. Title of this chapter: _Hey There, Delilah_


	6. Somewhere Between Cher and James Dean

Laura wakes up to a phone chirping.

Which in itself isn’t unusual; ever since her career’s taken off, there’s always some kind of fire to put out. But she’s pretty sure she turned her phone on silent because Carmilla got a little swear-happy, and this is a lot of chirping.

“Laura.” The voice comes from underneath her and Carmilla sounds just as exhausted as she feels. Exhausted in a good way, with every limb aching deliciously. “I will stab your phone into pieces if you don’t turn it off.”

“Not my phone, creampuff,” Laura says without opening her eyes. She enjoys using Carmilla’s nicknames against her. She’s so comfortable, she’s never going to move. If Carmilla can’t breathe—Laura’s half on top of her, their legs tangled together—that’s her own problem.

“What the hell?” 

Laura groans because Carmilla shifts out from underneath her. “Ignore it, it’ll go away.”

Except the phone keeps chirping, and Laura realizes that no, that’s unusual considering she’s not sure Carmilla actually has that many friends (though LaFontaine is dragging her into friendship whether she likes it or not). Laura opens her eyes and looks at the clock, unsurprised to find out it’s nearly noon. “Where’s the fire?” she asks Carmilla, who’s sitting up and peering at her phone.

“YouTube, evidently. Did you…oh, that video we did went online and apparently people found my Twitter account that I signed up for because I wanted a free pizza or something.” Carmilla rolls her eyes and turns the phone off.

“LaFontaine must have posted it early. They were supposed to post it on Wednesday.”

“Hate to break it to you, but it’s Wednesday.”

“What?” Laura opens her eyes and scrambles off of the bed, ignoring Carmilla’s groan of protest. “We’ve been in bed for three days?”

“Sort of. More like in bed, on the couch, on the counter…”

“Oh my god,” Laura says because she can’t deal with this right now.

Carmilla twitches one shoulder. “I wasn’t protesting that last one at all. For the record.”

“I had plans!” Laura heads for the bathroom. The first thing she needs is a shower. Three days. Between sex, watching movies, eating, more sex…she’s essentially dropped off the grid—though she did text her father at one point, she’s pretty sure—and that’s unheard of for her. “I was going to do some tourist stuff, and find that recording studio and get the song recorded so my producers could get a look at it and maybe okay me to test it out on some audiences on the back half of the tour. And I was going to…”

“Breathe.” Carmilla strolls into the bathroom behind her and saunters over to turn the shower on. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“I still have to buy my plane ticket!”

“Text Jeep and make him do it.” Carmilla steps under the spray and apparently they’re showering together, which, okay, fine, that would have happened anyway. She stretches out, all but purring. Laura can see the faint red scratches down her back that came from her own fingernails, which makes her feel a little like combusting all over the place. Carmilla shoves a curtain of wet hair out of her face and raises an eyebrow at Laura. “You getting in or not?”

“Are you going to distract me?”

“Obviously.”

“Maybe I should wait. I need to call a friend of mine, she had a friend that might have some studio time open—”

“Dammit, Laura, just use mine. Get in the shower.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose—”

“If you don’t get in the shower, I’m retracting my offer. Three…two…”

“Oh, fine.” Laura steps under the spray and hugs Carmilla from behind. Showering together always sounds sexy in the movies, but it’s like the reality of touring with a rock band: there’s only so much space, somebody’s probably going to get elbowed in the ribs or the face, and it’s either too hot or too cold. But it’s worth it when Carmilla pins her up against the wall, thumb idly tracing a bruise she sucked onto Laura’s hip, her eyes impossibly dark with want. It’s bizarre that they haven’t burned each other out. Laura’s had lovers before, but she’s never lost three days to any of them and still been consumed by an insatiable need to touch and be touched.

By the time they make it out of the shower, her fingers are completely pruny and her knees feel like jelly. They eat another takeout meal, this time clothed and sitting at a different counter than the one Laura shoved Carmilla onto at some point in the past three days (time has lost all meaning). Carmilla jerks her head at Laura’s guitar, still sitting in the foyer. “Ready?”

“Abso _lute_ ly.”

In the studio, Laura stretches out her fingers and goes through an extended warmup because it’s been three days since she played and she’s not sure she’s actually gone that long without touching an instrument. At the soundboard, Carmilla adjusts her settings.

“So…” Carmilla says after Laura shakes out her right hand, which has gotten a little cramped. “Are you ever going to play this new song for me or do I have to ask?”

“Do you even want to hear it?”

Carmilla shoots her an unimpressed look that makes Laura hunch her shoulders inward.

“I didn’t know you wanted to hear it. I thought you were using me for sex,” she says, her voice small.

“I _am_ using you for sex,” Carmilla says. “But I’m also your sound tech.”

“You don’t even like my music.”

“It’s not the worst I’ve heard.” Carmilla folds her legs underneath her on the stool, props her elbows on her knees, and rests her chin on her fists. “Relax, I’m kidding. I like your stuff.”

“You do?”

“Even if I didn’t, I know for a fact that you finally getting your tongue halfway down my throat was the inspiration for this one, so consider my interest completely academic.”

“It was not.” How on earth does she still make Laura blush, after everything Laura has done to her body? 

Carmilla’s laugh is completely wicked. “Play the song, cutie.”

Laura resettles her guitar on her thigh and clears her throat. She’s played the new song—which doesn’t even have a title yet—so many times over the past few days that the opening chords will probably be burned into her memory forever. Carmilla’s not the first person she’s played it for, as LaFontaine came over before she left Styria to hang out and marathon TV they’ve missed on the tour. But where LaFontaine listens for the beat and their role in the song, playing for Carmilla is an entirely different experience. She keeps her eyes narrowed, but they’re focused on Laura’s guitar rather than her face, and the look is so intense that it sends a flutter through Laura’s midsection.

What is she hearing?

The first verse is the roughest, but she’s proud of the bridge, which took her two days to get right, and the variations in the chorus. She puts in a key change for good measure to keep the song dynamic and nearly laughs when Carmilla shakes her head. It’s not the most personal song she’s ever written— _Lophii_ definitely fits that—but it’s something she’s been thinking about since the tour began and about the strange twists her life has taken that have led her to this moment, actually, playing for a woman she’s known little more than a month, in a basement studio in Brooklyn.

When she hits the final chord, she takes a bow. “What do you think?”

“Who knew there was actual talent underneath all that record label bull?” Carmilla asks.

“Hey!”

“Oh, relax. You know it sounds great.”

“I don’t know anything, I’ve been playing this song non-stop for a week and a half. Or I was until you distracted me with your…” Laura waves a hand vaguely at Carmilla, as she really feels that more than explains it. “LaFontaine liked it, but I have no way of being objective about this. Are you lying and telling me what I want to hear?”

“I only tell you what you want to hear when I want you to stop talking about sugar-related items. The song is fantastic, Hollis. Stop doubting yourself.” Carmilla grabs the underside of the table and swings herself around a little on the stool. “What are you envisioning? Could go full on orchestral or really basic, soulful, and simple.”

Laura narrows her eyes because those are more questions that a producer would ask, rather than somebody she was just hoping would press record and let her save a very raw demo. “I…what do you think?”

“Keep in mind these are just my thoughts hearing the song once and you’ve clearly spent over a week with it,” Carmilla says, and pulls out a piece of paper, “but I’ve got a few ideas.”

* * *

“I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame. I’d even cut my hair and change my name—” Laura’s singing, which, to be fair with Laura Hollis, isn’t unusual. But the problem is that Carmilla’s trapped and the choice of band is…well, Carmilla would give anything to get _Mmmbop_ back compared to, of all things, Nickelback.

In the booth, Laura strums harder at the guitar. “Because we all just want to be big rock stars,” she shouts into the microphone, sending the VU meters into the red, “and live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars.”

“Cupcake.”

“The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap—”

“Laura.”

“We’ll all stay skinny ’cause we just won’t eat—”

“ _Laura_.”

Laura mercifully stops singing and playing, swiveling toward the booth with a mischievous look. “You were saying something, Carm?”

Carmilla pinches the bridge of her nose to stave off the tension headache that she’s not sure is happening because they’ve been in the studio recording for hours or if Laura is attempting to win arguments by singing terrible songs. She looks cute doing it, of course, but it’s Nickelback and there are some lows you don’t stoop to. “Okay, fine,” she says. “The bridge sounds fine as it is. No need to layer in anything else.”

“Ha!” Laura brandishes her guitar like a matador with a cape, strumming manically. “I knew you’d come around.”

“You realize that you’ve actually broken the laws of the Geneva Convention to get me to agree.” 

“Aw.” Laura steps out of the studio and kisses her on the cheek. “They’re not that bad. And that song’s weirdly catchy. I bet you wind up singing it in the shower later.”

Carmilla shudders.

“Careful, your face might freeze like that. Ooh, speaking of, let’s take a selfie. That video’s still going around, we should check in or something.” Laura pulls her phone out for the millionth time during their session and crowds in close to Carmilla at the soundboard, holding the phone with her free hand. She nudges her shoulder against Carmilla’s. “C’mon, smile. People like you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” But she plasters a fake smile on her face and only rolls her eyes a little as Laura sends it to Instagram. She’s been filming all day, either talking to the phone or recording Carmilla at the board and on the piano, even though she claims her phone isn’t nearly as good as LaFontaine’s camera. 

At some point, LaFontaine will cut it all together, and Carmilla’s not sure how she feels being so prominently featured. Her place has always been in the crowd where she belongs as a sound tech. Laura, though, pulls her into the spotlight as often as she can. Carmilla’s convinced if the singer could do it, she would drag her onstage every performance. It’s unnerving, knowing that even at this moment there’s a video circling the internet that’s the two of them playing guitar together. When she checked during a break, there were several thousand views, which is bizarre. She’s had to turn off notifications on her phone, as Laura’s fans have hunted down every social media presence she keeps and those are getting flooded with messages.

LaFontaine texted them that the original version of _Straight Up_ has received an uptick in downloads on iTunes. And to think it was just a song she picked to mess with Laura’s head. Paula Abdul had better send them a really nice thank you card.

“Oh, _wow_ ,” Laura says as Carmilla fiddles with her laptop, waiting for a file to render.

“What?”

“I figured out why we’re so popular today.” Laura’s eyes widen as she looks at her phone and Carmilla leans over, curious.

The name on the screen makes her freeze all over for a split second. She bites the inside of her cheek. Hard.

“That’s weird that a country music superstar would share our video,” Laura says. “Oh, and she’s following me now? What the Hufflepuff? How does she even know I exist? We’re completely different genres. I know I’m getting more popular, but she’s like leagues above me.”

Carmilla hates that there’s hero-worship in her voice. She was having such a good day, too. They’ve laid down some tracks for Laura’s new song (still untitled) and she even managed to distract Laura into a prolonged make-out session on the couch earlier. She loves live-mixing, but the studio is a second home to her. She belongs here and having Laura here doesn’t lessen that feeling at all. And now reality has come crashing into them in the most horrible way possible.

“Carm?” Laura asks when she turns away to fiddle with knobs that don’t need it. “Is something wrong? Do you not like Ell? I know she’s country and I’ve never seen you listen to country, but she’s got some decent songs. You mock, but there’s one I absolutely love. I wish her voice were stronger because it’s such a beautiful song.”

Carmilla pinches the bridge of her nose again. This is a nightmare. “It’s not _Only Mine_ , is it?”

“Oh, you know it?”

“Yeah.” Carmilla’s laugh holds no humor whatsoever. She pushes herself off of the stool, stepping around Laura, who’s now watching her with a worried look. It takes a little digging, but she finds the platinum record in the shelves, stuck between Hendrix and Morrison. She sets that on the board in front of Laura. “Yeah, I know it.” 

“Um.” Laura blinks at the title on the record. “Why do you have one of Ell’s platinum records?”

“She didn’t want to take it when she moved out.”

“She didn’t—holy shit. Ell’s your ex? You dated _Ell_? Were you ever going to mention that?”

“There’s not really a good way to bring that up in conversation,” Carmilla says, bemused by the fact that she finally found something that can make Laura swear, and it’s not sex. She’s such an odd duck. 

“Okay, maybe you have a point. But…Ell? I didn’t even know she was…”

“Obviously she’s not out, so nobody ever really knew about it. Sometimes I wonder if it was even real.” 

Laura looks down at the platinum record, frowning. “Why didn’t she want this?”

“She didn’t write the song, didn’t think it was fair. I wrote _Only Mine_ , but my mother didn’t want my name near her professional work in case somebody put the pieces together. I never got credit. Not when everybody needed to think Ell is the hetero-est hetero to ever hetero.” 

She’s aware Laura is gawking at her. She doesn’t look at her, but steps into the booth and walks over to the piano. She suddenly, desperately needs something to do with her hands. Anything to do with her hands. She sits down at the piano and noodles with the keys.

“How…how does that even happen?” Laura asks.

“When I dropped out, Mother made me a deal: she’d keep the lawyers off of my back about my trust fund if I sent any of the good bands that came to the bar her way. Dad wanted me to stay in school. I’d have had to wait otherwise without her stepping in.” Carmilla shrugs off the details and plays a few minor chords. She’s aware of Laura standing in the doorway, but she doesn’t look at her. “Ell played at the bar one night. She was cute and I was nineteen and naïve and I wanted to impress her, so I sent her to my mother. She got signed.”

“You talent-scouted Ell?” Laura asks.

“I wanted to get into her pants. Don’t go assigning noble roles to me, cupcake.” Carmilla starts playing a Strauss waltz because she’s always felt a kinship with the Austrian. She can still feel Laura gaping. “Ell got famous fast. Almost overnight, really.”

“Yeah, I remember it felt like she came out of nowhere and then she was everywhere.” 

“The world adores her.” Carmilla plays in silence. “We were together for a few years, and it was nice. She had fake boyfriends the label set her up with, and I always ran the board on her tours. We spent a lot of time together that way and nobody ever suspected. And then, because I was twenty and stupid, I wrote a song for her. Which was a mistake in every way.”

“But it’s a gorgeous song,” Laura says, frowning. “You must have loved her.”

Carmilla doesn’t reply. 

“So what happened?”

“My mother happened. What she did, cutting me out of _Only Mine_ , it never sat well with Ell, but that’s my mother for you. She paid Ell’s band to look the other way about us, but only because I kept Ell happy and writing songs. Which she told me after the first time I brought Ell to a family dinner.” Carmilla feels her eyebrow twitch. “I figured, screw her, I’m happy, if she wants to go on thinking that Ell is writing songs because we were together, then whatever.”

It’s Laura’s turn to stay silent.

“I underestimated her,” Carmilla says, playing on. “Ell was late on delivering an album the label was after. She was stressing because of the fame and keeping our relationship a secret, things were getting in the way. And Mother, angel that she is, was all too happy to let Ell in on a few things. Only in her version of the story, I was complicit in being the lesbian incentive the whole time. You can imagine how well Ell took that.”

“Oh my god, Carm.”

“My mother will go through any length to keep the talent motivated. Remember that. Hell, she probably is hoping for a repeat performance with us.”

“That’s diabolical.”

“That’s my mother.” Carmilla closes her eyes and keeps playing. “In her eyes, it’s probably already working, given what we’ve spent the day doing and all. I expect once you send this song in, I’ll get an email congratulating me.”

“What you’re getting is a producer credit, and she can fight me on that. And for the record? I didn’t write this song because of you. I mean, yes, I was inspired after the whole bus-top and starlight thing, but this song isn’t about you. And would you please stop playing and actually look at me?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Fine.” 

She feels a nudge against her shoulder and gives in, scooting over to give Laura room on the bench. She hasn’t allowed herself to think about Ell lately, as working with Laura and her band is the polar opposite of her time with Ell. Ell was sweetness, but Laura is light. Annoying and persistent light that you can’t shut off at times, but she genuinely cares for those around her. 

Laura clears her throat. “This is really pretty. Who wrote it?”

“Strauss. The younger.”

“Sure. I never took you for a waltz-type gal.”

“I can’t resist a song with ‘Blood’ in the title, but yes, there’s a lot you don’t know about me.” Carmilla opens her eyes.

“As this conversation more than proves, that’s very true.” Laura lets out a short bark of laughter that doesn’t contain much mirth. “Why is your mother dangling you as sexual bait? That’s so gross on so many levels.”

“Ell wasn’t a predator, cupcake. We were two consenting adults.”

“Still, though. It’s gross that your mother twisted it that way. Nobody deserves that.” Laura bobs her head like she’s a little freaked out, which Carmilla supposes is fair. It’s not a subject she brings up because technically she signed some papers that say she’s not supposed to, but she doesn’t give a damn about those. It’s Laura. She trusts Laura.

Laura suddenly grabs her shoulder, but Carmilla’s fingers never stutter on the keys. “Wait. If you dated Ell,” she says, her eyes wide, “how many of her breakup songs were about you?”

Ell’s not as notorious as Taylor Swift for breakup songs, but she’s written some very scathing and blistering anthems for the broken-hearted. And the media loves speculating about her mystery paramours. Carmilla shakes her head and finally feels the corner of her lips turn upward. “As far as I can tell, _Count Me Out_ was about me.”

“The entire album?”

“What can I say? I make an impression.” Watching Ell lose all the Grammys for that album had been its own personal catharsis for Carmilla, but then, she’s petty and she knows it. She takes her fingers off the keys. “It’s not exactly something you bring up in everyday conversation. ‘Want to get coffee? And by the way, my ex is incredibly famous and hates me.’ And it has nothing to do with you. Whatever my mother’s plans for me are, I’m not a willing participant.”

“Except you came on the tour without being paid,” Laura says, looking annoyed.

Carmilla reaches out and tucks some of Laura’s hair behind her ear. “Still hung up on that?”

“Yes. In fact, this might actually be the hill I die on.”

“Well, you paid me already, so let it go.” 

Laura’s eyes light up at her words. Mercifully, Carmilla’s already made this mistake once or twice, so she springs at Laura, covering her mouth with one hand before she can belt out that stupid song from _Frozen_. Laura licks her palm and Carmilla makes a face, but doesn’t release her grip. She’s fallen for that before, too. When Laura’s eyes widen and she starts talking against her palm, Carmilla sighs and lets her go. 

“What’d you say, cupcake?”

“Just—maybe Ell wants you back, if she’s calling attention to our video?” Laura does that thing with her face where she’s trying to seem nonchalant. “Like, why else would she do that?” 

Carmilla opens her mouth to point out that not even Ell can understand the inner workings of her own twisted mind, but stops. She closes her mouth and shrugs. “I don’t care. Just look at it as a career boost because she’s popular and she’ll send people your way and if she’s playing some kind of mind-game, well, that’s on her.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if life were fair? If the monsters got what they truly deserve and only good things happened to good people?” Carmilla plays the opening slide from _New York State of Mind_ , which has always been one of her favorite songs to play. It always makes her think of home. “Sad to say it isn’t reality, cupcake.”

“But your mother should pay for what she did.”

“Karma will get the old bat sooner or later. I’m too lazy to do it myself, and a little busy. See,” and Carmilla segues into the melody of the song, fingers finding the correct keys with ease, “there’s this singer, and she’s either after me for my studio or my body, so I’ve had other things on my mind.”

Laura laughs and bumps her shoulder, and she sounds less freaked out when she says, “Is it my fault that you’ve got a great studio and an even better body?”

“Ah, so the truth comes out. You’re using me for sex first, studio second.”

“Yup,” Laura said, reaching over and tugging Carmilla’s face toward her. Carmilla laughs and keeps playing when Laura kisses her. Laura nudges closer, angling her head to deepen the kiss, until she’s as close as she can possibly be without climbing onto Carmilla’s lap. Carmilla smiles, but doesn’t stop playing, when she feels Laura’s tongue sweep against her lips. She can already feel lust pooling low in her midsection, but she’s not going to stop playing, not when it frustrates Laura like that.

“Carm,” Laura says, whining a little.

“What? It’s a good song, and I—oof!” Laura tackles her, and the keys crash discordantly as she grabs at the piano to keep them both from toppling off the bench. “Jesus, cupcake,” she says as Laura settles in with her knees on either side of Carmilla’s thighs on the bench, hands already roaming. She kisses her way up Carmilla’s neck, making her mind go fuzzily blank for a second.

Possibly because she senses she’s finally got Carmilla right where she wants her, Laura kisses her again, slowly, and bites her bottom lip. She leans back a fraction and Carmilla has never seen anything hotter than Laura smirking at her like that. It should be infuriating.

Instead it makes her jittery.

“Couch,” Carmilla says, blinking a few times as Laura’s already fumbling with the front of her jeans.

“Aw, not feeling adventurous for anything right here? You could totally keep playing if you want. I actually want to see if you can.”

“No sex on the piano, Hollis. Too hard to clean. Couch.”

“Race you,” Laura says.

It takes several hours before they’re willing to get back to work on the song. Laura wears nothing but Carmilla’s shirt and a smug smile when she emails the file off to one of the producers she worked with on _In the Light_.

“You’re totally getting a producer credit for this,” she says as she crawls back into bed. “When we put this song on an album, it’s totally going to say written by Laura Hollis, produced by Carmilla Karnstein. Just like the rest of the album.”

Carmilla doesn’t roll over, as her limbs are rather pleasantly exhausted and she’s on the cusp of sleep anyway. She’d like a few days to sleep, ideally, but they’re shipping out for Seattle and the rest of the tour in only a few hours. She should probably pack or something. “We’re putting together an album now? How nice.”

“The tour’s only going to last so long, and then what will we do? Sorry, _creampuff_ , you’re stuck with me.”

“Could be worse,” Carmilla says, grunting as Laura picks up her arm and slips under it, cuddling in. She rolls over a little to tuck Laura’s head under her chin. “At least Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Drums aren’t so bad. And even Broadie has his moments.”

“You don’t have to say it. I know you love us,” Laura says, and Carmilla falls asleep before she remembers to deny it.

* * *

When they get back to the bus and the rest of the band, life returns mostly to normal: they drive from one location to the next, stopping at campgrounds or truck stops to shower, Carmilla and Kirsch set up and run all of the checks, they eat dinner together as a band if Laura’s not out doing local promotion, they play the show, and they pack up. The blogs, however, spend a lot of time focusing on how bouncy Laura seems on stage: she’s always been energetic, but this is a new level. And they have no idea why until the first tour diaries video from the second leg of the tour comes out and LaFontaine sneaks in a shot of Laura lying with her head on Carmilla’s stomach and playing with her hand while she reads. 

Of course, the same video also includes a shot of Carmilla scowling at the camera and walking away with her hands over her ears as Laura follows her around, playing _I Will Always Love You_ on the harmonica while Perry diplomatically hides her laughter behind her hand. But fans go nuts over that first shot.

But Laura doesn’t care if the world knows she’s with Carmilla or not. The label’s sent several emails about it, but she doesn’t really care what they think. Her fanbase knew she was gay before she even signed with LMR and she’s not going to hide Carmilla away like Ell did. She figures it’s only a matter of time before Lilita Morgan makes trouble for them, but in the meantime, she’s going to enjoy whatever paradise she can get, even if it comes on a smelly tour bus living with five other people.

But happily, the label loves the new song and is pushing for it to be a single, so in addition to her tour, Laura deals with everything that entails. She names it late one night when she’s unable to sleep even with Carmilla’s arms locked around her, saving her from the dreaded gravity monster (Carmilla is never going to let her forget that). When she tells Carmilla the name as she’s getting out of the campground shower and Carmilla’s about to climb in, her girlfriend frowns.

“The label’s going to make you change that,” she says.

“Yes,” Laura says, as she’s sure the label’s already named the song and she’ll get that mandate any day now. “But you and I both know the real name will always be Tennessee.”

“But why?”

Laura shrugs. “Just thought I’d give you a reason to like Tennessee again, that’s all.”

Carmilla stares at her with an unreadable expression for such a long time that Laura fidgets. But Carmilla only shakes her head, a smile breaking through. “You sap,” she says, dropping a kiss on the top of Laura’s head as she steps in and turns the water on. 

“Actually,” Laura calls over the water, “it’s named after you because really, you’re the only Ten-I-See.”

“Oh my god, please never say that again.”

Laura laughs and steps over to the little mirror to comb out her hair. Perry’s already been in to shower, and none of the other campground residents are around, so it’s kind of nice. Laura can brush her teeth and comb her hair in relative peace while Carmilla showers. They’ve got a show in Sacramento tonight and then they’re headed for some bigger shows down in Southern California, and Laura can’t wait.

She smiles as she hears Carmilla start to hum and doesn’t think much of it, focusing on brushing her teeth. The First Laura Hollis Tour Experience is going well, she thinks. She’s surrounded by friends, her really hot but annoying sound engineer turned out to be way less prickly than she first expected, and for the first time since she recorded _In the Light_ , she’s kind of excited about what her musical future brings. She’s about to mention this to Carmilla, who will probably mock her, when her brain finally puts together what her ears are hearing.

She steps closer to the stall and listens before laughter rolls out of her in waves. 

Carmilla stops humming and pokes her head out of the shower, squinting when water drips into her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” But she can’t stop the giggles. “When did you become a fan of Nickelback?”

“I am not a fan of—oh my god, that’s what’s been stuck in my head! Why do you do this to me?”

“I told you that you’d be singing it in the shower later, didn’t I?”

“Goddammit, Laura,” Carmilla says, disappearing back into the shower. 

Laura slides back against the wall, helpless with laughter—that is until she feels Carmilla’s hand yank at her shoulder and tow her toward the shower stall. She considers for less than half a second before scrambling out of her robe. Apologizing for Nickelback-related sins must be done immediately, after all.

They’re going to be late for sound check, but it’s not like her sound gal will mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, kudosing, commenting, what have you! I have an idea for another story in this universe, but I kind of have a book due in April, so who knows how that will go. But I appreciate you coming along with me on this ride!
> 
> If you missed it, there's an [extra scene from Chapter 5](http://freaoscanlin.tumblr.com/post/135079190559/mixed-up-outtake-scene-rated-pg-13-ish-no) on my Tumblr, and you should also check out the [Mixed Up Full Tracklisting](http://freaoscanlin.tumblr.com/post/135323829534/mixed-up-song-list-a-not-at-all-exhaustive) (also on my Tumblr).
> 
> (Chapter title comes from _Rockstar_ because Laura is a troll and my deepest apologies to Nickelback fans)
> 
> Until next time!


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